Hacker News Reader

Comment by Aloha | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, I see this all the time too, they offer 50-60% of market rate and wonder why they get no takers.

The ones who are good salesman do get takers. I don't really know why or how but they get them. Not the greatest engineers but also not bottom feeders. It's surreal. Granted it's usually people who don't realize their own worth or are naive about how much equity is actually going to be worth.

Hey, uh. So, I'm going to be graduating with a B.Eng soon. Any tips on how to realize my own worth? I have a tendency to let myself be taken advantage of... I mean, I'm currently doing a research internship at a computer vision lab at my uni for very little compensation (grant + departmental top-up). I told myself I was doing it "for the experience." I... I feel like I might be a candidate for the behavior you describe, so I'd like to snap myself out of that if possible. Any resources you could point me to would be stellar, please and thank you.

That's different. Academia pays less at all levels.

The unhappiest people I know are the golddiggers. They cannot escape the feeling that they’re being taken advantage of. That the pie is so big anyways, and they deserve a little more, you know? And oh look, here comes somebody offering just a little more. What kind of sucker wouldn’t want to get paid what they’re really worth?

They’re unhappy because they let other people control their sense of self-worth.

The best way is to interview at good companies and get offers from them. That means the usual Google, Facebook, Apple, etc. and also up-and-coming ones (Uber, Lyft, etc.). You don't even need to want to work for the company but getting an offer will tell you your worth for the future. You will need to study hard for those interviews but it's well documented online what you need to study specifically (read Cracking the Coding Interview, practice Hackerrank, LeetCode, etc.).

There's generally threads online where recent grads say what offers they've gotten from companies and websites like www.paysa.com that try to aggregate them but those are all biased.

Equity is a gamble not in your favor, read up on how many startups fail outright, how many sell for basically nothing, and how much you're going to get diluted in funding rounds. Founders will say otherwise but it's their job to sell you so don't trust them. So if you do want to gamble on a startup make sure to heavily discount the value of equity when negotiating.

Equity is literally a scam at this point because there's the stock options that they give you, the private stock they give themselves, and the stock the VCs get. You're literally last on the list to get paid and first on the list to get shafted. It's not like it used to be where stock meant everyone shared risk and reward.

> You're literally last on the list to get paid and first on the list to get shafted

Isn't that a given with equity? You're literally saying that you're a residual claimant in the enterprise. Yes, with stock options and such things you might be even "more" residual than others in the capital structure, but it's not a "scam".

https://www.levels.fyi/

I've been doing this for a while.

I just measure positives and negatives and once exceeds the other, I'm done.

Brush up on Cracking the Coding Interview, interview at the top N companies wherever you can face living, research salaries for that area (levels.fyi is good if you're in the bay area, I'm told)

If the company is pre-ipo then look for top 10 venture capitalists as investors (Kleiner Perkins etc). This signals a company with good prospects! You do research - if you have to, pay the money to join CrunchBase - and figure out what each share is worth in the last funding round in dollars. Sometimes it's published in news articles and sometimes in Delaware Corp filings ($$$ to retrieve; crunchbase is easier). Their offer should be market if the (stock grant) x (last funding round price/share) + your base and bonus is average for a person at your level. Check levels.fyi. check Glassdoor salaries. If it's a unicorn check the university of bc unicorn report to see if there are ratchets or preferred shares (bad for you, a common stock grantee) in previous funding rounds. Then make a guess if they can IPO. 95% of silicon valley companies cannot. I picked one that was already getting ready to file an s-1 (IPO disclosure).

My biggest mistake as a new grad PhD was local cost of living. I wanted the prestige of working at a well known university. Turns out I didn't have the safety net or family wealth to work there.

Use an online calculator to estimate after-tax take home pay. Look at home price per square foot. A good offer nationally will pay 300 sq ft of real estate (take home pay) per year. My salary has varied from 110 to 1800 sq ft per year. I quit the 110 sq ft job after 2 years I just couldn't afford it; that is unsustainable! The 1800 sq ft job was in Phoenix; one house (new) per year! My current salary is ~250 sq ft a year which sucks nationally but is good for one of the most expensive cities in silicon valley (400+ sq ft just a few blocks away in a lesser school district); I am very Senior with 30 YOE.

+1 I like your metric, $ as sq ft / yr.

I imagine the people that would accept that are 'lifers'.

Where they get comfy, rationalize that they know their job, and the company never has to spend more than 98k on this person for the next 35 years.

Weirdly enough, it seems like Fortune 500 pays best for the brightest and they have them working on high level concepts and paying suppliers to perform the nitty gritty engineering.

I don't quite understand the rationale behind this hiring phenomenon.

Its not that hard if you've worked in corporate america.

Executives like to work with people that they "like", so its frequently people who went to similar schools, have a similar sense of humor, don't say stupid shit etc. Even if these people are totally ineffective and have no skills, they will keep getting hired. Then, they make use of the new labor markets, where you can just outsource everything and hire consultants/contractors to do the actual implementation.

If the project succeeds, the hired person is a star and gets showered with money, poached by other firms where they try to replicate a similar, completely short sighted way of building business value.

If the project fail, blame the contractors get new ones.

This is the nail on the head.

Until we can show that there is something more effective (and possibly transparent) I fear we are doomed to continue repeating this cycle.

And because everyone knows this, a contractor can easily charge 2-3 times what an employee makes - aka what they're actually worth. The system works (Except of course for the employees)

Is there any reason to be an employee? I feel like its a suckers choice.

Benefits are not worth 2-3x the pay. I find myself being a contractor due to the better pay.

I've been on both sides. Depends on the company, of course, but all else being equal:

- Contractors don't always get the best projects. Often the coolest, most strategic projects go to employees. Of course, if no one internally is qualified, contractors then get the best projects.

- When cuts happen, contractors are at the front of the line, and when cuts need to go deeper, employees then are at risk.

- It is a pain to collect. You are often not the primary contractors, there is usually a pass-thru company that is well-connected and gets the receivables and then pass them onto you. Sometimes they delay payments 45 days. Sometimes 60 days. I've had some months paid 4 months late. On rare occasions you never get paid.

- You pay the employer payroll tax if you are in the US and on 1099 (on W2 you only pay half the payroll tax).

- Benefits you purchase are often not the best benefits. The benefits you would get at a large company are often well negotiated and much better and much cheaper than what you purchase a la carte.

Obviously for a contractor premium high enough, none of the above really matters. But contract work isnt worth it, for say, a 40% premium IMHO, especially with a family. At higher premiums (250%, 300%) it can make sense assuming you like what you will be doing.

The single most valuable attribute in a corporation is loyalty. Skill is an illusion.

Aren't most startup founders straight out of school and never worked anywhere full time in software? Maybe that's why they behave like they do with only small guidance from their VCs that could well be detached from reality too.

Or, as the title of the post suggests, the VC guidance is to look for suckers.

The average age of a software startup founder is 40 [1].

[1] https://hbr.org/2018/07/research-the-average-age-of-a-succes...

There's a possibility that someone agreeing to work for less than market, in software, given everything else about them is stellar, is a phenomenally positive signal.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com