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Comment by jedberg | Hacker News Reader

To everyone complaining about the $250K (see edit, it's actually 200K) per person in salary (which seems to be everyone at the moment), a few things to keep in mind:

1) That includes benefits

2) They are in Silicon Valley and have to compete with everyone else in Silicon Valley

3) Given what they have accomplished with such a small team, these are probably high caliber people.

4) In SV there is a good 25% premium you pay for engineers with security expertise.

As someone who runs a business and has to hire talent, I can say that I'd consider myself lucky to get such a team for such a great price.

Edit: A bunch of people are saying "why not remote". I think they are in fact mostly remote, but they still have to compete with SV wages because really good people command those wages whether they are here or not.

Edit2: As has been pointed out multiple times, the blog post was not clear, and it is actually 200K per person, all in.

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I think $200K/person is fine, but I do quibble with this:

> They are in Silicon Valley and have to compete with everyone else in Silicon Valley

Why? Why compete for talent in Silicon Valley when there are people all over the country who'd love to work on something like this? I can get why they might prefer not to do remote teams (it's a challenge), but there are cities like Seattle, Boston, Denver, Dallas, Kansas City, Houston — all of which have folks quite capable of building this.

In fact, for some folks not being located in SV is a huge plus!

As covered elsewhere, most of the team is remote. But they still get SV salaries because great people get those salaries no matter where they are.

It doesn't work that way for all the remote jobs and contracts I've worked.

Maybe you aren't a great engineer?

That's pretty insulting to suggest in any case and borders on a reprehensible attitude to take personally against someone.

I think what jlukanta is saying is that the greatest people get the salaries they demand regardless of location. If you're insulted by the suggestion that you might not be in that top category, maybe you're letting your ego respond instead of thinking about it rationally.

The idea that not being "great" is insulting is more toxic than assuming someone isn't great. Lots of hero worship in this industry that fucks with people's egos - your statement being a prime example.

He directly insulted me, clarify how in your thinking, this has anything to do with hero worship? Stating your views without falling back on the needless application of profanity is something I'd appreciate.

I'm pretty his/her intention was not to insult you. Since you won't even consider the possibility that you're not a great engineer, perhaps you're just bad at finding decent jobs and contracts? Or you're bad at negotiating pay? I'm honestly a little confused because my impression is that contractors and consultants make more money than full-time employees.

If you understand great as considerably better than average, then you probably aren't great. I'm not. Almost no one is, although almost everyone thinks they beat the curve.

If you understand great to mean merely competent, then I think you're abusing the meaning of "great".

I agree that it was a kinda shitty thing to say.

You offered yourself as the example. You don't have a lot of room for complaint when people look at the example you provided.

If it helps you unbunch your undies on this topic, consider that "great" in the original meaning was something like "world class". There's no shame in not being one of the top people in the world.

I did not mean that as an insult. I apologize if it came across that way. Others have made a better explanation of what I was trying to convey.

Or a great engineer that is not a US resident.

More likely just not a great negotiator.

Counterpoint: It did for me.

that is ridiculous, do you have evidence to back that statement up?

If you consider anecdotal evidence then I have received, with no negotiation, similar (statistically identical) offers in low cost of living areas and high cost of living areas.

I'd love to know where. Not trying to be snarky.

I work in a pretty small niche that's concentrated in high cost of living areas so I would prefer not to get too specific. One example was a company in the same country as Omaha with similar cost of living.

A different company was in a different country than Omaha and the naive cost of living was higher, but the cost of living, after adjusting for taxes, was actually very similar.

I hope that gives enough information. I really enjoy living in high cost of living areas so that's where I ended up, but I did have the choice to live somewhere cheaper.

Country, or county?

Country.

lol not ridiculous at all

Glad to hear it! That was my first thought on glancing over the figures: 'hmm, I bet they're located in Silicon Valley, they could save money by moving somewhere cheaper'. But if the money is actually going to hiring the best people instead of into the pockets of San Francisco landlords, fair play to them.

"Silicon Valley" is the red herring then. World class people get world class compensation because they are damn good.

I propose that not so good techies may get more in SV but paid averagely elsewhere?

Regular people get world class compensation (which this is not) because they ask for it.

I'm guessing part of the negative reaction you're getting is because great people don't just "get SV salaries" no matter what. To get an SV salary, you need to find employment at a company able and willing to pay an SV salary. Being a great engineer does help a lot, but you need to chase the salary, it won't just fall into your lap.

It's much harder if you want to be remote, and very hard if you want to live in a country where no company pays SV salaries.

Yea, those SV salaries are what a lot of CEOs make over here in Southern Europe. Of course, this might say more about Southern Europe, but for most of the world, when we see 200K a year paychecks, its hard to imagine that its for an engineer (especially for a programmer or sysadmin).

Also there are other countries than the US

There are not insignificant complexities involved in hiring people multinationally.

Is there a business op in this? Just a simple umbrella company in the US that supplies talent from around the world?

You people are hilarious.

Hey, YC, I've got a great idea for a startup in the incredibly hot cert/encryption space. The team is world class and in place. The product is shipping and customers are doubling every 6 months. $8 million at $40 million please.

Y'all idolize the bloodsuckers in Teslas that run this site, and give Josh and team grief. Jeez.

I somehow can't imagine 'dang owns a Tesla. Seems a like a Boosted Board guy to me. Also, not a bloodsucker.

I'm not giving Let's Encrypt grief — I think the wages they are paying sound decent. I was quibbling with the person I was replying to.

You are taking this way to harsh, I don't think he is giving them grief.

You would think people working for a SV company in places with a much lower cost of living would take a much lower salary, but you would be wrong. It is certainly my experience in hiring.

As it should. Nobody is going to get a discount on great engineers because everyone wants great engineers, and there are a hell of a lot fewer great engineers than job openings for them.

If the employees lived in Silicon Valley they would probably demand more than 200k/year for the same skill.

I'm a 3 years software engineer in France and I'm getting 29k€ (tax excluded) per year. With current exchange rate that makes SV guys getting paid 10 times more than me. Where's the onion ?

This just means France has a weak software industry.

> I'm getting 29k€ (tax excluded) per year.

Ask your employer first how much it costs to pay you that. It's probably much more than you think. The LE people get paid <=3x as much as you and that's easily justified with SV salaries in general and their expertise.

Lets be generous and say the employer pays 45k, its still way over 5x more.

Hi fellow French engineer. You are paid 29k€, which already covers for your health insurance, retirement plans, unemployment insurance, education, and so on. It is often said that in France, the employer pays 2x what he pays you (look up "salaire super-brut"). In America, you often have to cover your ass by yourself --and from what I understand, you absolutely don't want to get cancer or any serious illness there, no matter your health insurance. Also, living in these areas is fucking expensive -- a friend in NY made $5k a month during his internship, but had to pay $2k just for his apartment. The same holds in SV, I'd say.

However, I don't know your job but 29k€ seems a bit at the lower end of the scale to me, at least for IT. Have you looked at websites like glassdoor.fr what's the mean salary for your position? From what I know the first years are highly dependent on your diploma, but after a few years it shouldn't be effective anymore.

Edit: and as @chrischen says, IT engineers are not much valued in France. I'm pretty sure you've heard about the expression "pisseur de code" (literally, someone who pees code). I'm also pretty sure you've met "entrepreneurs" who had a "great idea" and who "only need" an intern to implement it --but surely they got the idea, the IT guy is just an operating man so he shouldn't get credit, even though is idea is 100% about IT services (and, probably, shitty).

> tax excluded

Why?

If they provided an identical quality of service with 25 employees for $2m nobody would bat an eye. I'd say the fact that the team is so lean is justification for higher salaries in and of itself.

I think this is a better point. They seem to be incredibly capable for such a small team with such a large impact.

Could they provide a better service with 25 instead of 10 for $2m though?

Assuming the salary cost scales with the skill of the employee linearly and assuming that 25 people causes extra management overhead I would say no.

$200k, including benefits, employment taxes, etc. is probably more like $150k in salary. It's not at all egregious for good programmers. I've had employees make near that in Ohio and have friends in the field who make considerably more.

Also it's a budget, so I suspect it's intentionally padded to a small degree.

While prices haven't converged on SV everywhere, it does have a ripple effect.

You're overestimating their final salary. Per-employee expenses are usually almost the salary all over again. Payroll taxes are a real bitch. It's probably closer to $110-$120k salary per employee.

"Payroll tax" (more appropriately known as the employer-side of the FICA tax) is only 7%, it's really not what I would qualify as "a bitch". My wages are 80% of my total compensation (my employer provides a nice breakdown of insurance costs, 401(k) match, etc), factor in 7% of my wages going to FICA and their total cost to employ me with my total compensation package is ~125% of my annual salary.

I also make a fairly lower wage than the industry average since I'm not in SV, insurance rates don't increase proportionately with salary so if this is what I'm seeing at $75K/yr then at $200K/yr gross these employees are most certainly seeing at least $150K/yr in their salaries.

Not in CA. http://www.adp.com/-/media/Compliance/2016%20Fast%20Wage%20a...

Ah, yes, forgot about UI and workers comp, so let's make that ~130% (assuming an employer doesn't have egregious numbers of unemployment claims which cause their UI to skyrocket).

In my market (Ohio, US) loaded cost of an employee is between 130% and 135% of salary.

No. I've employed people in California. You don't pay 70% extra. It's more like the 25-30 range.

The human cognitive measure for egregious pay is not: Pay > Marginal Utility to Humanity, otherwise there's millions of jobs that provide Pay > MuH or even where Pay > 0 > MuH, and I don't hear people complaining about that fact very often. If you look at it through this assumption that compensation should be provided in exchange for providing a benefit to the world, complaining about LetsEncrypt dev salaries begins to look ridiculous.

> I can say that I'd consider myself lucky to get such a team for such a great price

I am concerned that they might be being underpaid for doing the type of work that they are. Let's Encrypt is not only a great service, but an important one too. I assume they have a good stock plan to make up.

Since they're a project of the Linux Foundation, they most definitely don't have any sort of stock plan – since you can't have equity in nonprofits.

I don't want to put words in the parent commenter's mouth, but I think the implication was that they would need to make up for NOT having a stock plan.

Netflix level pay would seem about right to me.

So, double? $400k loaded? I'd buy that.

LF is more of an industry consortium than a nonprofit public interest charity.

The 2M staffing budget in 2017 is for ten people, not eight. Was not clear enough in the blog post initially, apologies.

Actually it is for 8. Two of the people are being paid by another company. At least that's what I understood.

Heh, I'm pretty sure OP actually works for Let's Encrypt.

Lololo

It is ten (I made the budget), but I apologize for not making that more clear in the blog post.

We have eight employees now, and have budgeted for ten in 2017.

OK, thanks for the clarification. You guys are doing a really awesome thing but this post makes me worry about your longevity. Does Let's Encrypt have plans for other sources of revenue? Like selling support services?

> Edit: A bunch of people are saying "why not remote". I think they are in fact mostly remote, but they still have to compete with SV wages because really good people command those wages whether they are here or not.

This doesn't make sense. In the case of remote workers it's the San Francisco workers that have to compete with global offer/demand because nobody cares how much you are paying for housing.

It doesn't make sense but it is true. If you're really good, someone will make you an offer for an SV salary, and now everyone needs to compete with that. Besides, it's only fair. Your value shouldn't be tied to where you live per se. It's true that people in some areas make less because they have fewer options in their area, but for a high caliber person, they have plenty of options whether they move their physical location or not.

I'm pretty sure we're going to see a trend as remote work becomes more popular where there will be a much smaller delta because of location of the employee.

Yes, exactly. Remote is incidentally a way to save some money on salaries, but mostly it is a great way access a much larger pool of talent.

> Your value shouldn't be tied to where you live per se.

If that was the case people wouldn't make $200k in SV, $75k in Omaha, and $9k in Phuket for the same job.

People who are near the top of the skill curve, and can present a business case for being paid like it, don't make $75K in Omaha for that job. (They may make $9K in Phuket, but there are additional factors on top of that.)

If I left Boston today, I'd still make what I make here. I have considered doing exactly that.

That really depends on very much more than your skill as an engineer, and the ability to "present a business case for being paid like it" simply does not apply to the majority of employment negotiation scenarios--even ones involving the very best of the best engineers. Most, in fact almost all employers have fixed salary schedules for their positions and they simply will not deviate from these as a rule, nor will they entertain negotiation around them.

> Most, in fact almost all employers have fixed salary schedules for their positions and they simply will not deviate from these as a rule, nor will they entertain negotiation around them.

Most employers will happily tell you that this is the case. That does not mean that it is so. If you rate it, those doors will, at many companies, open. But you have to rate doing something that is Not Normal, and you have to be able to communicate why you rate having the people dealing with your hiring stick their neck out and do something that is Not Normal. This is hard. Few people (not just engineers) can do that. But it can be done.

It means exactly that it is so for almost all cases. There are always going to be exceptions, but those are just that: exceptions. There's a reason they're called "exceptions." Edit: the people who set compensation are very rarely the people that decide whether to hire you. The latter may communicate the salary HR dictates to them, but they almost never have negotiation power within their own employers' structure.

I've worked at 20k+ employee companies where these are split into entire separate decision-making structures. Salaries are set by HR and approved far up the chain, and hiring decisions are made by people who do not share supervisors until you're a level below the CEO.

When you're hiring a "Programmer II" in a company like that, the salary is not going to change. You might be able to negotiate work-from-home a day or two a week, or an extra week of vacation or something, but you're simply not going to make more than the upper bound of that schedule, and being at the upper bound of that schedule will negatively impact raises until you get promoted.

The CEO or COO or CIO is not going to approve a $100k salary for a Programmer II when the band is $60-75k. It just won't happen.

On an extremely related note, there is zero ambition and very little technical skill at that company. The vast majority of folks with skill and ambition leave after 2-3 years.

It doesn't have to apply to the majority of employment negotiation scenarios. It just has to apply to enough of a particular class of worker to set the market price.

I would also suggest your understanding of how often exceptions are made is very unlikely to be based on good data. Employers have ways of hiding that they are paying somebody more than their traditional salary structure when they need to make an exception. And a very strong incentive to do that hiding.

Yes, and the same reasoning would apply to folks suggesting that employers routinely are open to negotiation. On the other hand we have a plethora of anecdotal data (e.g. through Glassdoor and other self reporting places) and BLS salary data by region and classification (https://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oessrcma.htm). The means and medians in these data are quite close. It'd be nice to see upper and lower extremes, modes and other information to gauge the actual distribution, but it strikes me as an extraordinary to claim successfully negotiating higher-than-average wages is typical.

Who's saying anything about typical?

I've never been a typical employee in my life. I have, however, been the highest-paid non-manager (or so I was told; this might have been an attempt to shame me into working more for free) in a hundred-person development group, well out of band, because I brought capabilities and skills to the table that they needed more than they needed to Maintain The Integrity Of The Salary Band.

So if your point wasn't that employers routinely deviate from their prescribed bands ("as a rule") why did you respond to my comment? What I see is an anonymous Internet Person bragging without context (for all I know your non-typical experience could have been with 99 developers who were seriously below average).

They won't routinely deviate from prescribed bands for your typical engineer. There are many, many engineers who are atypical, whether because of skill set or skill level; before I went into consulting I was able to command top-of-market salaries because I am pretty good--not the best, but pretty good--and actively went into areas of technology that others didn't. I was then able to communicate to potential employers why this mattered and how I would be able to help them, because I have enough of a business background to be able to make the case for myself. And while whatever "talent" is involved may be innate--I don't think it is, but whatever--the rest is eminently learnable.

And calling me "anonymous" is kind of funny.

If you see him as anonymous, you are definitely not trying very hard. Or at all.

I'll be seeing you at the next Anonymous Anonymous meeting, right, Anonymous?

You know it, A.

> Yes, and the same reasoning would apply to folks suggesting that employers routinely are open to negotiation.

No, it wouldn't, because employers have a strong incentive to hide salary band violations, while employees have a strong incentive to discover when negotiations are possible.

> it strikes me as an extraordinary to claim successfully negotiating higher-than-average wages is typical.

Then you should probably go talk to somebody who made that claim. But it's a nonsensical claim, so my guess is not many would be making it.

I think it has a lot less to do with being at the top of the skill curve than with making the business case for it.

I'm sure that's true. The world is not a technical problem. It just happens that the folks I know in that position more than deserve it from a technical perspective.

Yes what is and, according to the parent what should be, diverge.

What this really tells me is that workers in Omaha and Phuket ought to demand more, and that they are selling themselves for far less than the value they create, or else that they aren't actually doing "the same job." Likely both are true.

In most cases, it is at least partially tied to how much value someone can extract from you, which really has to do with how much value they bring in the market.

It's less about the 'value I create' and more about the 'value company X is able to create using my skills'. And... in some measure, you're going to be tied to how good the company itself is. I could give the same deliverable to two companies, and one may be able to make 20x more than the other, owing to other factors like network, sales, marketing, image, etc. In that case, they could probably pay me more as well, because they're earning more, but that then gets in to business vision and politics - do they see the software/tech as a cost-center or a profit-center?

Agree with this. Some in south India make 100K USD for the job that would make 140 to 180K in USA. But not everyone though and like other post mentioned it is about the companies perception of your value and most of the Fortune 500 companies have some base setup for each title irrespective of where you live.

I have direct experience with getting offers in an area with cost of living similar to Omaha. With no negotiation, the pay was the same as in the high cost of living area where I chose to live.

I don't have direct experience with Phuket, but I've heard of friends who get paid US level contract rates in similar areas.

I think it has a lot more to do with being a good negotiator and being good at leveraging your skills than being "really good" in a general. People don't get what they deserve. They get what they negotiate.

I believe that the wage pressure moves in the other direction: most Silicon Valley firms prefer local engineers, but they're a limited resource. If you're paying $2000+ in rent, you're incentivized to seek unusually high wages -- and, as a local engineer in Silicon Valley, you're in a position to do so. Employers are competing for /you/.

(Of course, we shouldn't dismiss the less market-determined psychological factors at play: if you're an executive at a startup flooded with easy money in a culture that doesn't particularly value corporate fiscal responsibility, you may want to pay better-than-market for the pure gratification of doing so.)

Most startups, including funded startups, seem to pay significantly lower than established tech companies in this area. My anecdotal experience certainly fits that. The last time I was job searching the highest offer I got from a startup was $130k plus a hiring bonus and laughable equity with poor benefits, while the young company (IPO within the previous four years) I accepted an offer from came in at well over 20% more than that all-in.

I think startups undercompensate and more or less target lottery-equity chasers.

> To everyone complaining about the $250K (see edit, it's actually 200K) per person in salary

I don't think people are _complaining_ about it, just expressing surprise/shock. It's one thing to read the anonymous "I know a guy who's brother's roommate makes $300K at Google" comments that you have to take with a grain of salt, but another thing to see an actual company's data. Eye opening for sure.

$200K per person staffing budget isn't $200K per person salary. Benefits, employer share of payroll taxes, and other things that don't show up in top-line salary are in there. You are a lot bigger cost to your employer than your gross salary.

Yep. Here at UC, the non-salary costs can be in excess of 60% of salary.

And in the federal govt it's at least that percentage... Anecdotally, in one department within the DoD, it's ~90%, which sounds insane.

> Anecdotally, in one department within the DoD, it's ~90%, which sounds insane.

If you consider how little uniformed military personnel are paid and how high the other costs associated with them are to start with, I'm actually not all that surprised that somewhere in some specialized area in the DoD this ratio is reached.

This was interesting when I was in. I was making $25k a year as a corporal, but I was saving almost all of it because I wasn't paying for rent, utilities, health insurance, food, or the gym. My expenses were Internet, cell phone, and car insurance / gas. That was it.

I make three times as much in the civilian world, but I'm saving less.

They also probably don't include BAH and BAS as salary since they are considered reimbursements. Just as you wouldn't include cost of barracks as part of your salary if you lived there. BAH and BAS are a very large part of compensation.

We can take that to an extreme: <br> (from 2015) http://time.com/3651697/afghanistan-war-cost/

"...the CRS (Congressional Research Service) report says the cost of keeping a single American soldier there (Afghanistan) this year is an eye-watering $3.9 million..." <br> I don't think there's too many millionaires coming back from Afghanistan.

"Each Javelin round costs $80,000, and the idea that it’s fired by a guy who doesn’t make that in a year at a guy who doesn’t make that in a lifetime is somehow so outrageous it almost makes the war seem winnable.”

- Sebastian Junger

Just to add on, usually salary is ~3/4 of cost to the company, so ~$150k is the average salary which seems completely inline for quality talent with experience

Yeah you have a point. I guess living here and having many friends who make more than 300K/yr as engineers (and some as much at 450K or 500K, and a few getting >1.2M), I've become numb to it.

Since we're talking, how much did you make at Netflix? 250k seems "entry level" there for a good engineer. Do managers make more?

h1b data is a good source. Especially for Netflix since almost all their compensation is in salary, rather than benefits/stock/etc like a lot of other tech companies.

http://h1bdata.info/index.php?em=Netflix+Inc&job=&city=&year...

A good Engineer earning $140k as a base salary in SF shouldn't be a surprise (if it is, you're quite out of touch with the market) and then you have to add in the other costs companies have to budget for (benefits, stock, expenses, etc) plus it's clearly an average over the employees (so will include some that make much more and some that make less).

Honestly if it's surprise/shock it's _still_ a bit strange.

Why? I don't think it is surprising. Throwaway account, but when I interviewed at FB and Apple I got offers for over $1m/4yr total comp, which is $250k/yr. Is Let's Encrypt doing less valuable work? Should the employees voluntarily give up compensation for some reason?

My previous startup job was similar in salary to the FB offer, though without the guaranteed RSUs (>300k/4yr).

When I look at the public salary data it seems low

I'm in Silicon Valley and I would love a $250k salary.

But I also didn't graduate college and incur the immigrant tax. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

What I'm saying is, not everyone gets $250k and the MEDIAN HOUSEHOLD INCOME in San Francisco is $90k. If you're not making that much, don't sweat it, you're likely way above median either way.

Edit: to clarify further. As an Engineer with a reasonably-employed girlfriend, I still get to live in SoMa, and I'm not complaining. But statistically speaking my household is an outlier. $250k/year for a household puts you in the top 1.5% in the country[1]. That's probably top 5%-ish for San Francisco. That means that for every 5 households that make this much, there are 95 that don't.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Affluence_in_the_United_States

They're not actually making $250k each. Keep in mind that this includes employer taxes and benefits, which add up very quickly.

OK, so $200k in salary then. Still stupendously good. WOW!

Maybe there _IS_ something to all these "I know this guy who's brother's roommate makes $300K at Google" threads. It just seems so unbelievable.

I'm surprised that there remains so much disbelief regarding these figures. There are a plenty of people at large software companies in Silicon Valley who are paid well north of $300k.

https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Google-Senior-Staff-Softwar... https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Dropbox-Engineer-Salaries-E... https://www.glassdoor.com/Salary/Facebook-Staff-Software-Eng...

Google has thousands of engineers. How many "senior staff software engineers"?

"This estimate is based upon 18 Google Senior Staff Software Engineer salary reports"

"This estimate is based upon 1 Dropbox Engineer salary report"

"This estimate is based upon 1 Facebook Staff Software Engineer salary report"

So we're looking at salaries of 20 engineers. There are how many thousand engineers in the Bay Area?

I don't think your data is statistically significant. I'm not saying these people don't exist. I'm saying they're not as common as these companies would like us to believe.

Yea, I always understood those Super Senior Staff Software Engineer roles at these top companies are for the rare "I invented the TCP in TCP/IP" people, not the more common "third average software engineer from the left".

This is an incorrect understanding. I personally know someone at Google who is nowhere near "I invented the TCP in TCP/IP" and they make >$300k (but not much more) with just a few years of experience.

From what I've been told, take the employee's salary and multiply by 2 to get the actual cost to the company.

To hire them, maybe. To employ them (after the cost of recruiting), it's more like 30% on top of salary.

To clarify, average $200k per person in staffing costs. Staffing costs > salary.

Yes, depending on the level of benefits offered and local taxes, you are looking at 20%+ cost on top of salary to employ someone.

As others have pointed out, with benefits, taxes, etc the actual salary is going to by way under that.

But I don't see why you're getting downvoted either. The income inequality in places like SV and Seattle/Redmond is insane. People working "normal jobs" struggle to get by and often have to commute further and live way outside the city just to survive.

It gets even more ass-backwards because public transport hubs are way more expensive to live near and, once again, only highly paid individuals can live near them (and therefore ditch their cars potentially saving even more money, where as the not so well off have a car requirement because .. American's transportation failure. And before you give me that "American is too spread out for rail" shit, Russia has three high speed rails and St Petersburg has the 2nd largest tram network in the world).

You're pointing to a very real problem. If there was plenty of housing and transport, those wages wouldn't put the strain they do on every one else. But there isn't and they do. Working remotely would actually be way better because at least they're not in the SV area.

And to rant a little more, a high end engineer that would cost $200k in Washington/California (maybe NYC too) would start at 50k euro in Berlin. They'd top out around 70k euro at the most. Even for really highly skilled positions, Germany tends to have way less income inequality and flats are also way more affordable for everyone.

> And to rant a little more, a high end engineer that would cost $200k in Washington/California (maybe NYC too) would start at 50k euro in Berlin. They'd top out around 70k euro at the most. Even for really highly skilled positions, Germany tends to have way less income inequality and flats are also way more affordable for everyone.

Which is why I moved to the States in the first place. I may have fallen from the top-ish of the pile to the bottom-ish. But the glass ceiling is waaaay higher.

Income data does not give you the full picture, especially in a city like SF. A lot of people have inherited wealth or trusts that provide moderate income (at least as reported to the IRS), so looking at income alone is insufficient for understanding wealth profiles.

My neighbor runs a small business and makes $60k/year. But he lives in a house he inherited worth over $3mn while paying taxes on the value it was assessed at in 1963.

This answers my perennial question of "How the hell do these people survive??"

Any idea where I could find wealth data? Would be super cool to research as I spend a lot of time thinking about stuff like this.

According to https://letsencrypt.org/jobs/

"All of our positions are remote, and we can only hire in the United States and Canada."

Curious how benefits are worked out for remote employees?

Also its ~200k per person, which is all the costs including overhead: salary, benefits, equipment, etc.

I can't speak for everyone on the project—I've only really interacted with one person—but I just wanted to say that $200k all-in is an absolute bargain for him (if that's in fact how it breaks down) given his skills, experience, and ability to operate/drive the project.

I would hope they have high caliber programmers and ops people, considering the problem space. Those don't come cheap.

Can anyone comment on tax overhead for the company in SV? What net salary do 250k amount to? (net as in minus the tax for the company, not the employees income tax)

It depends a lot on corporate structure and actually HQ address for tax filling. Each city has their own business license rates and deductions. And some cities (like SF) have extra taxes per employee. Their website lists their HQ as SF, but it would be impossible to know from the outside what their exact tax situation would be.

I guess my point is though from a company perspective not much more than anywhere else. The biggest cost to a company here is competing on wages.

I've worked in finance for a medium-sized SF company and a small (~50 employee) startup in SV. Our standard assumption for 'all-in' employee cost was to add an additional 30% on top. For highly paid employees, this actually gets reduced a bit since FICA cuts off at $118k.

To get to $250k total outlay with an admittedly outdated spreadsheet, the salary would have to be $200k (benefit load of only 26%). Of course this depends greatly on PTO, Health Care, Worker's Comp, etc.

There isn't as much as people bitch about, generally speaking you have a few items:

- FICA payroll tax - this is US wide, so not really more expensive in CA. - CA state payroll tax, this isn't that expensive, just a few percent. - Workers comp, could be cheaper in other states, but coders/office workers have cheap workers comp. - Health insurance, maybe a bit more expensive in CA

Basically hiring people isn't expensive because of the taxes, but because of benefits and just generally having a higher income rate. In my experience it was about 10%, and if you add health care another 10-15% so about 25% total overhead.

Also office space: 100 - 200 sq.ft. per employee * $75/sq.ft. in SF -> $7k5 - $15k per employee.

That's like for the MOST expensive office space in SF though. Also that's PER YEAR, not per month.

I once rented out office space in SOMA, and it was more like $18 sqft/year. It was cheap and in a shitty place, but still SOMA.

That's average price according to http://fortune.com/2016/01/11/san-francisco-office-rent/

I thought it was totally reasonable considering the domain their work exists in (cryptography and security), the average salaries of professionals in our fields (especially in SF), and the overhead of benefits and taxes.

Really happy to see a member from EFF and another from Mozilla as well, two very respectable foundations in the fight for user and citizen privacy in the digital age.

I shall absolutely be donating in the future. (Especially since a 10 dollar per month donation is less than two ssl certificates at godaddy.

Love your work!

I think $2.91M is a modest (if not lean) budget for the important work they're doing.

How many websites now have HTTPS because of LetsEncrypt? How much would they have needed to pay for certificates from an incumbent CA?

I agree in terms of results and like them. Yet, I'll ask you since you're still in industry: "Wouldn't it be cheaper if they got hackers in Germany like close to Berlin? And not be operating in a police state with secret courts and such?" The latter is ironic given Germany's history.

Legal aside, I've seen plenty of folks over there putting together OS's, VPN's, cryptophones, etc. Most doing heavy lifting don't make SF wages or have office costs that high. Plus, one could poach some veterans in PKI from one of the big security companies. At least one of them. I doubt it's the only such place given all the country names in my files on cutting-edge research.

> Most doing heavy lifting don't make SF wages or have office costs that high.

I work remotely from home and don't make anywhere near as much as someone in the valley. However, I'm quite happy with my cost of living. :)

I see you playing it smart. Good for you! :)

More to the point, if anyone truly believes they're able to do it for cheaper... Do it, don't comment about it.

Complaining about that is insane.

To put it in perspective, almost any Fortune 500 is paying $200k for a contract Level-2 helpdesk analyst.

Short term contracts might be different, but 95% of normal software engineers in germany will e.g. never reach 100k. Including those in the large corporations. I think 200k might be barely in reach for a senior manager. In other countries/regions this will even be far lower.

It's a nonprofit looking for next years funding. An engineer defintatly ought to be paid as if it's a short term gig.

This might be part of the advantage America has over some European countries when it comes to elite talent.

Germany has horrible pay, a senior software engineer for Amazon and the likes is making 60K Euro's....

No one I've ever known makes that in support roles. Consultants can get that easily though.

The worker makes $30, the contractor and body shops take the rest.

What does it mean to analyze a helpdesk?

For more context, consider (1). It shows the expected pay for someone with a masters in comp sci, working as an engineer in Belgium. It tops out at just over 5k (gross) a month, so just about 65k a year. Less than one third of 200k.

(1): https://imgur.com/a/zRWXT

I agree completely, especially regarding benefits. A lot of folks will look at a base pay rate and turn down the job because they will have $1000/month less "fun money" than if they take the job across the street. What they don't understand is the job across the street has shitty healthcare plans, little or no investments/stock options/pensions, less or less flexible paid leave, and so on.

I went back into government work specifically for the benefits, even though the pay was no more than I was already making at a private company. That company wasn't offering me any health insurance and I had to fight tooth and nail for any time off, paid or otherwise. At my current job, while it's not as mentally stimulating, I can retire at 50 years old with my sanity, full benefits, and retirement intact, and work for myself in my golden years without fear of losing health and life insurance.

I agree and want to corroborate from another point of view, speaking as someone that's hired at and been a technical lead at multiple organizations: it's very hard to find actual talent, and paying a higher salary for one actually talented engineer is almost always a better investment than paying average salaries for, say, three average engineers (conservatively).

From that point of view, which I am convinced of, I not only see no problem with this - I see it as a good sign, and have more faith in the organization because of it.

Considering what this team is doing, creating, and providing to everyone free of charge-- especially keeping in mind the scale of it, and the magnitude of it's impact on the entire Internet-- I'd say pay them more than $200k. They maybe should offer top tier salaries, in order to attract and keep top tier talent (not meaning to disparage the current team in any way, they could be best in show for all I know -- what they've done thus far is pretty incredible and they're just getting started)

Would their staffing cost also include office space (even remote companies have headquarters)? Or would that be included somewhere else? Or do they actually not have an office?

Seems totally reasonable, also I don't know about the US but in other parts of the world there are other kinds of staff related costs you have to consider too like fringe benefit tax etc. Seems like let's encrypt is a great meaningful endeavour that produces good results for the world on a pretty elegant idea and lean implementation.

There is an "Executive Director" mentioned in the list of employees. I wonder if that persons's salary is really the same as the engineers'? ;-)

Forget the salaries - you're getting REAMED by your laywers! $350,000 a year for legal and administrative is ridiculous, especially given that this is not for your salaried employees.

That's a pretty damn high salary regardless. But I think that's fine if most of that money end up paying for the engineers who do the actual work and not the management.

You have a general problem with engineering management?

Just like the old "if you don't get paid enough, go somewhere else" mantra, if your manager is shit - go somewhere else.

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