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Comment by hashkb | Hacker News Reader

I don't think the average engineer with 5 years of experience makes 250k; not even in the top 10%. And startups DO pay that much, it's just reserved for powerful exec hires.

Just pay more if you want the best engineers. Asking for a world where top talent works for less money is stupid.

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The average engineer at google with 5 years of experience makes at least 250K. To put it bluntly: I'm pretty sure the average cash compensation (that is, disregarding RSUs entirely, which is likely at least another 100k/yr) is going to push 200K. The same is substantially true of the main competitors to Google (Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft).

Right, but the article seemed to imply it was true generally. FB/Google/Apple are outliers and there are plenty of great engineers left in the talent pool.

The reason startups have trouble is that engineers can smell bullshit and know they are in demand. You can make a great offer (e.g. substantial equity, support growth, be an actually transparent leader, etc etc) and hire great talent.

Problem is everyone wants to have and eat their cake. I've founded a startup; founders are not special and their whole job is to build a good team. So stop whining!!!

Since the interviews at Google/Amazon/MS is famously hard they don't have the average developers (or shouldn't, then they have done a bad job with the recruitment). THEIR average is not the same as the average in the industry. I do think they are a bit closer to the average than they think but not very close to it.

I'd consider myself average at best and got job offers to two of those companies. I still work at one of them and have been promoted (so I can't be that terribly bad).

Honestly, reading cracking the coding interview and the algorithm design manual go a long way to summarizing relevant information you learn in college. Knowing how to write Python coupled with working through those books is probably enough to get hired like maybe 7/10 times. (I say 7 because a bad interviewer can sink your interview and there is nothing you can do about that).

My point being, is that the people that work at those companies are not dumb but that they are for normal people too. I wouldn't not apply just because you think everyone is somehow really smart.

The Amazon salary for a senior software engineer (amazon L6) in London is 86K GBP cash plus stock that varies on when you joined. After L6 almost everyone goes into management or leaves.

No it isn't. Your numbers are high.

Why do you think so?

Google et al. are huge but they're << 10% of engineers.

Not sure how you define "average" engineer, but salary+bonus+RSUs at google hit 180k for new grads. A promotion and overlapping equity grants gets you to 250k within five years, easy.

Hey. CEO here. So you're telling me if I raise salaries I might hire better engineers? Hmm, wonder if there are any theories about this relationship.

No, you need to raise compensation. If someone is worth 250k at Google, they may work for your company for 150k if they get 600k worth of options paid out over four years at a reasonable valuation.

A 400K investment over 4 years to earn something worth 600K over the same period which will be liquid after another 4 years - does not sound very compelling to me. If it were 600K/year, yes, that's attractive.

Your best strategy would be not to have a fixed salary, but a range of salary which you can afford with your outlay, and then seen what the potential hire can be enticed with. That way you know immediately if the candidate is too expensive for you.

Just randomly increasing everyone's salary may not be very helpful.

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