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Comment by compiler-guy | Hacker News Reader

Word on the street is that Meta is paying big time to overcome the toxic brand. So if you aren't personally too bothered by it all (and some people aren't), then you can rake in the cash.

https://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-pays-brand-tax-hire...

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They’re also hiring very aggressively from what I can tell. They have recruiters all over and the path to interviewing is remarkably short.

I didn’t bother because I like my job and I suspect their salaries in Canada will be very… Canadian.

No their salaries are quite Californian

Cool, thanks for that. I’ve been hesitating recommending looking into meta in Canada because so many companies see Canada as a cheap source of talent.

I mean it's still lower than peak bay area salaries but the Toronto scale is completely different from even like 2 years ago

Same with the Victoria scale. It wasn’t uncommon to see companies kind of capping out around $90k. I had to negotiate way too hard before I started working remotely instead. Since then I see rates around 120-150k in senior roles, which isn’t that much better with general COL inflation around here, but it’s an improvement. I think you’d generally do better by working remotely, still.

They pay a bit better than other FAANGs but it's not hugely out of line. Chances are if you can get a gig at Meta, you can get one at any of the others. Apple, for what it's worth pays a bit less than the FAANG median.

The sweet spot at this stage in the capitalist narrative arc is like a Series C/D startup that's found product-market fit and is rapidly growing. You'll get the same cash, and while there's a bit more risk, the equity could be dramatically more rewarding. Right on the knee of the curve.

> The sweet spot at this stage in the capitalist narrative arc is like a Series C/D startup that's found product-market fit and is rapidly growing. You'll get the same cash, and while there's a bit more risk, the equity could be dramatically more rewarding. Right on the knee of the curve.

Don't they use that spiel to get you to take less salary and a smaller cut of equity?

> Don't they use that spiel to get you to take less salary and a smaller cut of equity?

They sure used to, but these days at a funded and successful C/D you'll get very similar cash. The market for engineers is insane right now. I've seen Meta starting salary levels offered by even earlier stage companies.

[edit] As for the equity angle, it really depends - but generally speaking if you're being offered options I'd divide by 3 when comparing to an RSU offer (i.e. expect 3X as many options as RSUs) which triples your leverage even if they're intrinsically not worth anything on receipt. And depending on the stage, that equity could easily be dramatically more valuable even if you get less to start. This is more of a question of how much leverage you have in your negotiation.

I highly recommend becoming friends with a recruiter wherever you work :) being able to find out what you should be making next time is a super-power, and they're generally super fun and friendly people!

The missing element from the RSU/options conversion is the (very important) liquidity premium. For a Series C company, I would expect to not see material liquidity from options for 4+ years, so I would discount the options by at least 70% off the top to account for lack of liquidity and possibility of future funding rounds reducing the value of my options.

Engineers who had options during the .com crash and the GFC can share more about why near-term liquidity matters.

Yeah, you're right, liquidity commands a strong premium IMO. Depends on your risk tolerance.

Not sure if this is still true, as most of these sorts of companies have gone public, but there was a period between 2015 and 2019 where these sorts of late stage startups were paying comparable base salaries but were giving what was essential double the amount of equity. For people who got this deal and held onto their stock until today they're better off by a lot than had they worked at FANG.

What consumer-facing or B2B startups currently fit this description?

All I could think of was Stripe off the top of my head, but maybe a good place to start would be https://duckduckgo.com/?q="completes+series+d" ? It's an interesting approach to filtering the job noise.

Stripe is way more than Series C/D at this point. Their last fundraising was a Series H that valued them at $95B. That's more than Ford or GM, and more than the big-4 U.S. airlines put together.

I think they still have pretty significant room to grow - Mastercard is worth almost $400B, Visa is $475B. I heard their stock grants are now a fixed dollar amount which converts to a number of shares upon vest rather than grant, though [1], which removes a lot of the upside. If you negotiate $300K/year at Google (as a senior+; I heard junior hires have a new stock plan) and the stock price doubles, you get $600K/year in stock for the remainder of your 4 years. If you negotiate $300K/year at Stripe and they go public at 5x the valuation, your existing shares are now worth 5x as much, but you're still getting $300K/year.

[1] https://www.teamblind.com/post/Stripes-New-Offer-policy-on-R...

Ah that's a really good point, and I didn't realize it at all. I think the other half of my comment stands though.

Not sure about that. Startup/fast growth tech space is in a bit of a bubble, so your equity very likely could be worth less by the time it vests.

Lots of share price growth over the past two years has been valuation expansion, and marginally due to organic growth. Even the big guys... like NVDA has doubled their profit, but their share price is up 10x. Obviously not a sustainable trajectory

FB on the other hand has like a 20 forward PE, despite high growth. Unlikely to fall much, except if new regulation/legislation passed that effects them.

If I had to pick any spot, it would be as a founder/cofounder seeking capital for seed stage right now. Personally wouldn't join the majority of companies for equity and expect it to retain value.

That will be quite the filter on who works there.

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