"As a startup it's hard to compete with Facebook and Google compensation packages, especially for senior engineers"
Also, Oracle apparently had a lot of success building out their bare metal (now cloud infrastructure) team by making uncharacteristically (for them) good offers.
You can hire good people, if you're willing to pay them. Bullshit doesn't work anymore.
As a startup you mostly expect people to work 10+h a day.
It's not always about the money, but if all other things are equal, yeah everybody is gonna take the higher payed position.
I do six days of 4-6s for my current position and feel as effective as any of my co-workers, if not more-so.
as much as employers don't want to pay you more wages, they seem even _less_ inclined to offer anything that isn't wages.
respect? pfff. sooner get another 4% out of most employers.
install some sound dampening anything to make the working environment nicer? madness, instead the marketing folks will pick some new colors for the walls.
fire the toxic asshole who fucks up all the projects? whoa, that toxic asshole is critical to completing every project going at the moment; they'd sooner let mr polite&courteous go.
Innovating on tired working practices (that most founders themselves would not enjoy in the least) offers an avenue to out-compete large companies for engineers while paying less cash and making your employees happier, more effective, and more loyal.
Please note, I'm not trying to say that startups should underpay employees, but financial reality for most founders does not allow for competing with the giants on salary (or even coming close). Since equity is now viewed dubiously by many, startups need to look for other things they can offer in lieu of 300k/yr that candidates will truly value. Things like flexible schedules (remote or partly remote), generous PTO, and good working conditions are often viewed by engineers as literally priceless. And for good reason. What's the point of tons of cash if you have no free time to spend it and your days consist of stress and drudgery? Sufficient wealth is a necessary component for quality of life, but beyond a certain baseline, other factors become more important.
Note: if you want to work on fun security, encryption, devops, and ux challenges, and enjoy your life at the same time, and R.intersection(["FP", "TypeScript", "Security", "Kubernetes", "Go", "Rails"], YOUR_SKILLS).length >= 2-or-3, and you can do 2-3 days per week onsite in SF (with some flexibility for remote stints) please send me a résumé: dane [at] envkey.com
This could be merely viewing it with the correct amount of doubt, as the trend has been toward less information asymmetry between founders/employers and candidates/employees.
The small size of employee option pools (which then get diluted) doesn't help, either. I can't remember where/when I read it, but I believe YC is pushing to change that.
It never entered my mind that they would do something like that to me. They certainly didn’t tell me it would be that way. Being on the other end of a nonstop video chat is like living a lie somewhere inbetween telemarketer and infomercial goon.
As a developer, I could not code with a constant video feed of remote assholes chiming in for more bullshit. I quit in a matter of weeks, and I’d do it again, the same thing, every time.
If you can afford that, you can afford more money for salaries.
Besides work flexibility, culture, purpose, and equity, how is a new venture supposed to compete with an entrenched monopolist that is essentially printing money (see: Alphabet)? Sure, equity is a multiplier that can return a huge amount of money with huge risk, but even equity+salary can't come near total comp offered by these juggernauts. I mean, these companies generate mountains of profits after paying crazy salaries and perks.
How can a startup compete for talent against these behemoths?
I'm saying the reasons startups typically give to justify their low salaries are largely bullshit and not persuasive.
> How can a startup compete for talent against these behemoths?
Outside of paying more, they really can't compete head-to-head with the behemoths. They should really focus on hiring junior people who can't or won't work for Google/Facebook. Case in point: someone wants to work on self-driving cars but Google won't hire them to work in that group. That's someone a self-driving car startup has a shot at hiring.
This is also antithetical to (some) startups' way of thinking, which is that they must hire only senior/"top" engineers because that's the only way to get a product out fast enough.
Similarly, mentorship (something TFA does advocate) is seen as too much of a time/resource sink, a luxury only behemoths can afford.
This attitude makes some sense at seed stage, but after a few dozen senior engineers on staff, it loses credibility.
Breath and depth of responsibility, and rapid growth in your responsibilities. I can't pay you as much, but I can put as the lead on our main product, and when you go for your next job, you can point at that and say, "I lead the team that made that happen".
It's very hard to give 15+% raises at behemoths so there's always people who are very underpaid for what they do.
I would say senior engineers usually output double, if not more, than a junior engineer. Why doesn’t pay scale with productivity?
Like, maybe I'm seriously missing something. Maybe Junior engineers at other orgs are ridiculously productivity? Maybe the expectation for senior engineers is ridiculously undproductive. Maybe the risk-reward of hiring senior engineers (and them getting hit by a bus) levels it out?
If the efficiency / dollar doesn't scale, then what's wrong?
You get more flexibility to take on multiple roles. More pressure driving you forward. Much, much less bureaucracy to worry about. No more 2 month discussions over code that takes 2 weeks to write.
The downside is that you could get tied up putting out fires, being unfocused. And there's little room for deliberate training.
Of course, even that's a questionable proposition. It calls out the youth of a Chief Product Officer at Facebook, which may well be cherry-picking/selection-bias.
As I've researched the managers at startups I consider working for, I routinely see on LinkedIn profiles that a high "rank" at a startup turns into a much lower one when an individual moves to a much larger company, though it does tend to go back up once that individual returns to startup work.