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Comment by photomatt | Hacker News Reader

I don’t want folks to get too hung up on the 25/hr number, it’s not meant to be a negotiation or imply a salary — in fact it’s identical for every role at the company, whether you’re doing a trial project in support, engineering, or to be our new CFO. At the time when we introduced it other companies were having candidates invest a lot of time to get hired with zero compensation, which didn’t seem fair and we wanted to shift that. You can also compare 10-20 hours of a remote trial to the time spent flying to and from a city, being there for a day, and doing lots of on-site work and interviews.

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I like it, especially that you have that as the trial salary for all positions (seems like a good shared experience).

If someone is optimizing to maximize a few weeks of trial pay, probably not the best fit.

Also, keep in mind that $25/hour is almost double the median wage of the USA. The software world is a bubble right now. By all means, I advocate to take advantage of that and save up, but don't get angry when a company's wages aren't 10x that of a non-software role. Sure, you can make a lot more money going to a company that earns a lot of money (generally via exploitation of unfair intellectual monopoly laws) while creating little surplus value for the world, or you can join a company like Wordpress that creates far more value for the world than they capture.

So it's OK to ask developers to sacrifice 1-3 months of their time working without benefits for at least 50% less than what they would normally be getting paid at any other company simply because $25/hr is more than the median wage in the US? I'm simply surprised that anyone worth their salt would submit to such a lopsided transaction! Good on Automattic for taking advantage of the situation, though?

Money is what you capture, value is what you create.

A lot of people are willing to take a pay cut to create more value for the world. It's too bad that things are so out of whack, but in tech right now, those 2 things are very uncorrelated (the prime reason from the data I've seen is unjust intellectual monopoly laws).

If you are a YOUNG developer, I would say go take the money! Good times won't last. If you are instead more concerned about what value you are creating for the world, there are a some well known great places to work (WordPress, Wikipedia, Mozilla come to mind but there are many many more often in research, government, or academia).

He said don't get hung up on it.

I’ve been a software developer since 1999. (before then I was a half developer/half operator for 3 years while going to graduate school). I have never made less than $25 hour.

So if there is a “bubble” it’s been going for two decades for me - and this is in Atlanta.

Thanks for the data point. I also have been a programmer since 2008 or so and don’t think I’ve ever made that either. But I also have done a lot of unpaid programming interviews and/or take home assignments. And also generally have worked at places with strict Intellectual Monopoly assignment agreements. So that’s why I think this particular offer isn’t so bad.

$45K was the average going salary in 1999 for 2-3 years of experience in Atlanta as your bog standard corporate developer. The average salary for a college graduate now is $50K (https://www.thebalance.com/college-graduate-salaries-expecta...)

50k seems really low for new grads today even in Atlanta.

I conflated two numbers. Everyone was mentioning that $25 is twice the average wage in America (which is a little off). If you use what I feel is a more accurate baseline - the average wage of a college grad in any area across the country. $50K is a better number.

> keep in mind that $25/hour is almost double the median wage of the USA. The software world is a bubble right now.

That's not the correct comparison. The median full-time wage in the US is closer to $50,000 (~$47k-$54k depending on what adjustments you're using). The median software developer salary is around $107,000 +/-.

The median wage overall includes part-time labor for example and people working very few hours. That considerably lowers the number versus what developers would expect to see, given the extremely low unemployment rate for tech workers (they overwhelmingly tend to work full-time jobs).

That's quite the screening though, isn't it? "Must be willing and able to take a 2-3 month salary loss"

I suppose it works out well for you, you will get only those that really want to work at Automattic and are willing do sacrifice for a chance, since they risk running a substantial loss if they aren't offered a position after doing a three month try-out. That is, for all areas where $25/hr is hard to impossible to live off of, especially for people with children, you end up either with those that are set up by previous engagements or are true believers.

I haven't met a colleague at Automattic who quit a job for the trial. And, for what it's worth, my (anecdotal) gut feeling tells me that we have quite a few people with dependents -- kids, sick parents -- apply, work, and succeed here.

Work is mostly asynchronous. Not sure if that came through properly. If you have about 90 minutes time every evening you can go through the trial within a month.

Is there pressure to work more than that while clocking 20 or less? I imagine overachievers could distort your expectations of how much gets done in 20 hours.

As far as I know the hours are just a rough guideline, and then also used for billing. When I did my trial it was OK to do more or less, depending on what worked for me.

In the end, the trial’s outcome is more determined by results — what you did and how you did it.

How am I creating “value” for the world by allowing a for profit company to take advantage of me?

I’m creating value for Automattic.

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