Ask HN: Why are SF startup salaries stagnant? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Why are SF startup salaries stagnant?

11 pointsaantix7 comments

In the Bay Area for early stage startups, I'm still seeing a common salary offer of 140K. Contrast that with Lincoln, Nebraska, I've seen a couple of posting for devs up to 160K (https://bit.ly/2MRqmRI ).

Meanwhile the big players, Facebook, Google, have distanced themselves with comp packages in the 300-500K range (with RSUs).

Is the midwest finally becoming competitive?

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It's odd to compare the top end of a few top-end job postings to the median salary in another location. I would guess that the folks accepting 140k salaries in SF are either really hopeful about their equity, or are just not the people who would get offered 160k in Nebraska.

But in any case, why are startup salaries stagnant? Because for most positions at startups, they don't really need "the best", they need someone with basic competencies, so there's no need to pay more than that.

I don't really know about the midwest vs. California divide, although I would say that 140 is base before options, and that the expected value of those options is greater.

There does seem to be a bit space that's opened up between the bigs, and startups. 10 years ago it was 200K at Apple, 100 at startup + options.

Now it's 140-180K at startups and 400K at BigCo. There are lots of BigCos btw. Apple, Facebook, Stripe, Dropbox, Uber, Lyft, Airbnb, Square, Twitter, Slack. Anyone with 300M+ valuation. (Even if they still call themselves startups :-)).

I worry a bit that startups at the 5-50 person level will have trouble getting the talent they need to challenge BigCos.

Here's a good discussion from the VC/founder perspective.

https://mobile.twitter.com/andrewchen/status/101387729764709...

Think large pond - small pond. In the bay area you have the quintessential large pond. Thus lots of fish and lots of fishers - who have found that a bait of 140K attracts a steady stream of nibbles. These fishers assess the nibbles and make offers - back/forth. The big fishers, lets call them sharks, Google, FB also get nibbles and they assess them with a lot more experiential depth, as well as $$, and when they see a fit they make a crushing offer. In Lincoln Nebraska, small pond, few fish, fewer offers - but a very nice place to work with lower cost of housing, less traffic, but remote enough to need extra offer $$ for the isolation (which I call a hidden bonus)

Maybe there's a ceiling on perceived value added per employee?

Where are you getting these numbers?

the 300k RSUs are very uncommon

Don't push this narrative because it's completely untrue.

These RSU packages are very common among Bay Area companies for an engineer with 5+ years of quality experience. You don't even have to go to a company like Facebook or Google. Take your pick of Twitter, Square, Box, Uber, Lyft, Pinterest, AirBnB, Splunk, Dropbox, or take your pick of any decent public company really...even Oracle will make these offers in their cloud division...

Yes you have to be talented and work hard, but it's completely within reach for most reasonably talented devs whether they know it or not.

Caveat? Reasonably talented.

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