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Ask HN: San Fran "Competitive Salary" for Devs

How much should one ask for for a San Fran "startup" developer position? Midwest salaries are much lower (due to cost of living and small tech scene) and the avg developer makes around $60k, so my reference point is low. Moving to the valley and possibly getting a job for an exploding startup, what is a reasonable starting point w/ 3 years of solid experience?

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Depends on the amount of funding and how much equity you're getting.

If they're well-funded (Series A or later) and you're getting negligible equity (hopefully not), then you should take the same salary as an established company like Facebook or Twitter would offer you. Probably a bit over $100k base for 3 years of experience.

Take that starting point and adjust it for the amount of equity they're offering and how much you think it's worth. Now your goal is to get them to pay you no less than you're worth. :)

Judging worth is not always easy unfortunately. It varies by need, in relation to other benefits, region, and more. I wish there was a simple test to take that would spit out a salary worth... Alas...

I don't think experience matters that much. If you're awesome, you should be paid $100K or more. If you're awesome, btw, I'd like to make you such a job offer.

Awesome at what? Solving problems? Check. Dedicating myself to things? Check. Working hard to get things done properly and quickly? Check. Having fun doing these things? Double check.

I'm not the best programmer in the world (jr level I'd say), but I sure as hell love what I do and I'm improving every day.

Currently my biggest tools are Ruby, Rails, Javascript (jQuery mostly), and HTML/CSS. Half front-end/half back-end dev in my day job.

email me: aanon2247@gmail.com if you're interested in talking.

note: obviously throwaway accounts

are you being serious? How can you be awesome without experience? Otherwise, why not hire a janitor and pay him 100K as a developer (he's awesome!)

I'm pretty sure he means "can make great things happen" trumps "7 years Java experience on the resume"

30 years experience doesn't mean much if it's the same year thirty times.

It's a good idea in general for small values of x:

  x years experience doesn't mean much if it's the same year x times

Probably true for x < 3 and often true for x < 7.

On the other hand, a person still using the same coding skills they had in 1981 probably writes damn tight efficient code...or is a God of COBOL .

I'm going to use this quote in the future because it's so true.

Hope you don't mind the attribution "a wise man once said [...]"

I stole it from someone else.

maybe "a stupid thief once said [...]"

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