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Comment by wyattk | Hacker News Reader

So are you saying that non-salary benefits are bullshit?

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?

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> So are you saying that non-salary benefits are bullshit?

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.

> They should really focus on hiring junior people who can't or won't work for Google/Facebook.

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.

Either raise more funding or have technical cofounders who stay technical? You are essentially asking how they can compete with money against competitors with more money. And the answer is that they should focus on culture/flexibility/equity as you mentioned. Especially culture and flexibility, since for small orgs these can easily be set from the top. Allowing fully remote working is a great move because it allows you to widen your talent pool and potentially pay less (at least less than Bay Area market rate)

> How can a startup compete for talent against these behemoths?

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".

Pay the 10x developers 3x to join your company. A lot of startups are just groups of very skilled engineers who have identified each other and left a behemoth together to work for themselves.

It's very hard to give 15+% raises at behemoths so there's always people who are very underpaid for what they do.

The startup should raise more money from its VCs to compete with the behemoths.

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