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Comment by davidu | Hacker News Reader

If this is what you think, you have not worked long enough to know you are wrong.

Read this: http://ea-spouse.livejournal.com/274.html

Lots of people have that environment but then get compensated a lot more to deal with it (unlike EA).

Go ask folks you know who have been in the workforce for a decade, they will most assuredly tell you that the different between $100K and $110K is $0. Even the difference between $100K and like $140K is still fairly marginal when you compare it to the other things you may or may not be giving up. I mention a bunch of those things to consider in my post.

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I have been in the workforce for a decade. Comparing EA to the typical web startup is not helpful. From an early stage engineering perspective I can tell you that most web startups are all the same. You might as well get paid as much as you can. The difference between 100K and 140K is not marginal. It's a down payment on a house in 3 years instead of 6.

I'm replying to this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1459940

Why do you work at a startup then? You could make so much more money at a bigger and more established company.

Because I get paid almost three times as much as I did at the startup I left.

I'm replying to this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1459955

I would always encourage someone being offered 3x their salary to take that. You'd be stupid not to take that, almost everything else being equal.

I'm talking about the people who see a $10K difference and think it's material in the scheme of things. If you're only focus is money, then fine, an extra $833 before taxes per month might move the needle. For the vast majority of people, that's not a sound way to make decisions on where you spend the majority of your time.

ps, no clue why news.yc won't let me reply this deep in the thread, some limit or something. Maybe because I'm OP.

You have to click on the link to the post to do the reply. There is a ratelimit on deeply nested comments.

$833 * 12 is almost $10K a year, it isn't trivial, especially if you have student loan payments to make. I just think all web startups offer about the same thing these days: free beverages! a web site! work 10 hours a day and LOVE IT! we are cool guys with t-shirts! we all work packed into a rented loft in soma! .25% of the company! you can use emacs or vi, we don't care! pick your tools! experience! foosball! you aren't working at microsoft!

It all sort of merges together. So the only thing you can really compete with is the coolness of your project and the pay. If people are choosing higher pay elsewhere, maybe your project isn't really that cool.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com