Open Salary and Equity Database | Hacker News Reader

Open Salary and Equity Database

topstartups.io

249 pointsbspear74 comments

I was very confused until I realized the link doesn't match the title at all.

The title of this submission is linked to this url:

https://topstartups.io/startup-salary-equity-database/

(though the actual title there is "Startup Salary & Equity Database")

Otherwise you do not get any salary/equity information. You get links to who works here (LinkedIn), reviews (GlassDoor), company web sites and jobs (Lever).

The title of the linked submission is "Top Startups 2022 - Funded by Sequoia, A16Z, Y Combinator"

They might have truncated it, there _is_ a salary page ([1]) that lists people's (self reported) salaries, equity, and series.

[1]: https://topstartups.io/startup-salary-equity-database/

Don't understand HN truncation rules, linked the right one originally

Edit: someone pointed out below that the canonical link incorrectly pointed to the base URL

The equity (%) without the actual cash value of the options is basically a vanity number - it does not mean much and is not comparable between the companies.

If they ever did a 409a, they have to share that information with employees, which at least lets you estimate the current upper bound on the cash value of your options. Sure, very far from money in the bank, but knowing the current upper cash bound can still be used to compare different offers.

Yup, that makes sense on an individual company basis but - that data is not in the sheet though.

A 409a should be a true measure of the value of a company, but in reality it is something that can be manipulated. There is a balance between valuation for the purposes of funding and raising your stock value so high that it can impact hiring as a function of perceived upside. Getting wrong on the high side can effect the next round, devalue shares issued existing staff causing a repricing or the need to issue more shares to existing staff to keep them around.

No, if you're say, an Eng manager with a Series B offer, there is a standard equity % band

News to me. Company value, dilution, risk, revenue, profit, outlook, etc. have significant weight.

Yes those matter to selecting any company, but equity % does as well

Why? Assuming we’re talking about normal employee options, if you’re early and get a big % that gets diluted, someone with a smaller % later can end up with more shares.

Strike price is much lower, so it's cheaper to exercise and potentially more tax-favorable due to QSBS too

Whilst I agree equity % alone doesn't give you a picture of the value of those options, what it does communicate is whether it's the kind of company that actually gives out meaningful equity, which is useful information. It tells you if the company is actually serious about making a big exit a life-changing event for all early employees.

The odds of a company making it that big are so low though, you're chasing lottery tickets with that outlook, which I suppose is still useful information.

I actually recommend chasing lottery tickets to people who are in common jobs like customer support or social media engagement.

You could do those jobs practically anywhere, but fast-growing tech startups tend to pay relatively well (at least as well as established players) and throw in a lottery ticket.

If you enjoy wearing a variety of hats, like you'll need to in a smaller company, you might as well do a couple years each at a bunch of different startups and collect lottery tickets along the way.

People don't tend to get rich in support jobs, but a bonus of even a few tens of thousands of dollars can be a game-changer, and on the off chance you catch a ticket that ends up being worth a couple hundred grand (what happened to me that made me start recommending this!), it'll change your life!

Rarely will a customer support role be offered shares that are worth more than a couple grand at the time of grant, and it's not always worth sticking around the whole vesting period, but if you get in late enough that the company has proven product/market fit (Series A and following, at least a few dozen employees, 3+ years), it probably won't go all the way to zero.

Unless they have extended their exercise window beyond that standard 90d, those lottery tickets may cost a lot is money to retain after leaving for another job. So much so that companies exist solely to extend loans for them.

You don't get to just collect multiple lottery tickets without either going out of pocket or watering down your share significantly.

That's true, although there are more companies offering extended exercise windows: https://github.com/holman/extended-exercise-windows

The thing is, most support agents only get a few shares.

Both of the last two companies I worked for, it cost me about $1,500 to exercise the shares I'd vested after about 2 years, and their 409a FMV was about $26k at the time I exercised them.

One of those companies has since gone public and my piddly little $1,500 became worth over half a million dollars.

It's absolutely a lottery, but if you get in places at the right times, I think it's worth collecting tickets rather than doing the same work for similar pay where you don't get tickets.

Haven't heard of this reasoning before, but it makes a lot of sense to me. Unless those roles still pay much better in big tech, but I think you're right - any gap in cash comp is probably small, which makes startups more attractive

The IPO price can be $1B or $100B -- that's wide variance in life-changing.

% needs context of how many other employees there are and what the valuation is a grant time.

Note that I specifically didn't say that the % tells you if the amount actually is life changing, just that it tells you whether the founders are serious about giving early employees a shot at such an outcome.

The signal is about the founders themselves, which is an important consideration when joining a startup.

Number of shares and current strike price + latest valuation, along with any practices for minimising tax burden, are still hugely important pieces of information. My point was simply that even just the percentage tells you something about whether it's a good company to join.

Percent isn't a useful metric by itself, but it's often more useful than number of options or grants. Often that's what is pitched to prospective hires. Or, worse, an ill-defined number of shares and a highly optimistic valuation of an illiquid entity.

Perhaps less relevant as the fundraising proceeds and the valuation approaches the targeted IPO price. But early on, the valuation will probably change drastically from Seed to C and securing an appropriate % is a good strategy. Many people don't know what that is -- for instance I accepted my first seed stage equity offer of 0.5% (negotiated up from 0.25%) but I now know that I was slightly lowballed. But you still make a good point. 1% from two 23yo first-time foundres with little experience, vs 0.5% from established founders with prior exits, solid networks, and reputable VC's presumably greatly increases your odds of a high valuation exit, so perhaps even seed / A stage its worth weighing that more than the percent.

In a private startup the cash value of the options doesn't tell you anything.

Typically the company tries to keep the strike price of common options as low as possible, to the degree the 409a consultant will let them.

The "problem" (if it is a problem and not an intentional choice) is that these equity compensation comparison things are heavily skewed towards US companies.

Often inferring the company to be $ or requiring you to add a "State" (which is a US thing primarily, often it's a pre-filled dropdown).

Any chance of at least this one being a bit more wide reaching?

I think levels.fyi is a much stronger implementation of the same concept if it's only US based.

Where do i see the salary and equity. May be I'm missing something?

Weird I think HN changed the URL. This is the right one: https://topstartups.io/startup-salary-equity-database/

thanks! this one works.

HN did that because the page claims that's the right URL. The header of the page you linked contains

    <link rel="canonical" href="https://topstartups.io">

Which basically says "https://topstartups.io contains the same content and should be the preferred URL for this".

This has happened often enough that I'm surprised someone hasn't added a check for it. At the very least, you'd think there should be an interstitial page asking for confirmation if the posted url doesn't match the canonical url.

I thought that referring to your base URL in a canonical tag was a bad idea - why would they do this, since the content on each of the two pages is different?

Interesting. Was this someone at HN updating based on that or does the submission system automatically use canonical over submitted url if present?

Submission system automatically uses canonical

I don't understand how we can ever know if ANY of these self-reported salary databases are accurate.

Some of them are really silly like someone claiming to get an offer with .75% of the company for a company with 500 employees for a "senior android developer"

Did they get an offer like that, or did they work there when it was 10 people? Because that makes a big difference.

Startups and VCs have long had really good data on what to pay people. Like that this is now being made public!

UI feedback: all the tags on the page need to be clickable, taking me to searches with that filter applied (e.g., "Crypto", "Logistics", "Y Combinator", etc).

The main thing I'd want to know is whether companies pay to appear in the Top Startups list. I learned Breakoutlist does this a few years back and it destroyed their credibility for me.

There's an easy way to pay your way into that list: pay high salaries.

I suspect sarcasm, as paying some list for a higher ranking, is cheaper than paying loads of people for a higher ranking.

Really? There's no indication breakoutlist does that on their site? Or they just don't disclose if companies paid

Yeah, they don't disclose which is why it's terrible.

Are you behind Topstartups? If so, you still haven't answered the question I posed for your website.

I am not, just found it the other day googling for other stuff

Aren’t these numbers a bit on the lower side? I haven’t seen many engineering positions in Austin offering less than $120,000 in cash for a while now.

Odd to see a bunch of 1-10 sized startups have director and vp of engineering roles. I’m assuming there is a CTO at those companies as well but I would have expected efficient team comp for that size to be one CTO 1 CEO 1 CPO one or two sales/marketing and rest engineers

My guess is that there isn't a CTO there, and the Director/VP is waiting in the wings for that title

What is BizOps? I noticed a lot of the non-technical roles here have that title. I've read wildly varying definitions ranging from Strategy to KPI management and data analytics, has the industry settled on a relatively consistent definition?

'BizOps' is usually a mix of internal consulting, operations, and data analysis.

There is no standard definition and I think we should keep it that way. With the number of 'Ops' that people are trying to do soon companies will need 'OpsOps' to make sure they're operationalizing their operations.

Is there a reason to not trust levels.fyi data? Or is this more focused on startups?

I haven't seen startup data on levels.fyi

What is the source of initial data for startups?

interesting idea, but with something like this it's important to keep it up to date and even browsing for a couple of minutes I noticed entries that are outdated either because the startup has been acquired, or raised a load more funds than are listed on the site.

I'd love to search by company name but that doesn't seem to be an option

Why do I care about their funding besides the point of whether they can pay me?

Recruiters do this all the time -

"Hey, here's a great position with a unicorn that just solidified another 100m in funding. But here's your below market offer. "

I guess there's some value to a listing of salary/equity figures without the associated company, but it would be far more valuable if the company were included. One thing I really like about levels.fyi is that their comp data streamlines my job search process. E.g., get pinged by a recruiter from a company where comp is 75% of my current comp -- hard pass. Get pinged by a recruiter from a company where comp is 150%+ of my current comp -- perhaps we'll chat. Without that data, it's awfully time-consuming to go through the process only to find that the comp numbers are a non-starter.

What about asking them for their comp bands upfront? So you don't waste your time if it's a non-starter

Great idea, but needs tech stack info also.

Why does the tech stack matter?

if you believe that, say, C++ devs earn more than JS devs, it would matter. If you aren't sure and want to find out, it would also matter.

Do specific tech stacks have more earning power though? Which ones?

Literally the whole point of this thread is that it’s not known because (this) data doesn’t include it.

There are a lot of ways to look at it. I think [1] is one of the better attempts and would suggest that the spread is much bigger for average jobs than for the highest paying positions, and that e.g. Scala, Rust, Perl or Go will earn you more money than Dart, JavaScript, PHP or Java. Also apparently jobs with DynamoDB pay almost twice as good on average (median) as jobs with Firebase; and Postgres or MSSQL pays better than MySQL or Oracle.

1: https://stribny.name/blog/salaries-by-language/

How else would someone know if the company has a stack that is compatible with their own skill set?

... well, we would like to make sure you can deliver value ASAP, I fail to see why it can be any different?

How does it not matter? Do you equally enjoy working with every technology? Would you not care if you had to use a different operating system than whatever you've been using, let alone languages?

They could add a link to / integration with https://stackshare.io/

Why do you think the tech stack matters? Is it because you want to compare yourself to other people working with X, or because you want to pursue the best paying technologies?

I don’t think either should matter, you’re paid for a job function not the tools you use, but the latter is a trap on my opinion.

I’m turning 40 this year and as such an approaching the sort of midway of my career and in my anecdotal experience you’re never paid for the tech stack. I’ve worked in startups, enterprise and startups growing into enterprises with lucrative employee stock options. I’ve worked with everything dotnet, Python, C++, RPA-tooling, Java, COBOL, SharePoint and SAP, JavaScript and now TypeScript. I’ve worked with every sort of operations setup from in-house to cloud and I very where in between. I’ve worked as a developer, then project/actual manager then enterprise architect and now developer again.

The only things that I have done that had any real impact on my pay grade level was changing jobs and doing indirect negotiations. You need to deliver solutions, you need to show the business the impact of those solutions and you need to make sure your employers know that they aren’t the only company in town who knows about the business value you being to the table.

I also encourage sharing your pay information with your peers. I’ve been fortunate enough to land some nice contracts, but because I’ve shared info with my peers I know of at least two people who went to the negotiation table where they managed to get the company to at least match my pay.

But tech stack? As long as it’s a sellers market, I’d encourage you to get good with something that is in demand that you also happen to enjoy working with. For me that is currently TypeScript front ends with node/dotnet backends that run in azure functions.

I think the people replying to my comment misunderstand my intent.

If they show the tech stack, people would be able to see if they could apply their same skills for much more money at a specific other company.

Programming language/etc. is typically not a huge factor for high paying jobs. If I’m giving you a lot of money, you’ll learn whatever you need to ASAP.

I am not sure it's true. You are hired for your skills so tomorrow you are another developer who can solve the tasks he is given in this specific tech environment.

>> You need to deliver solutions, you need to show the business the impact of those solutions

Most of the time people who interview (and eventually say yes/no) are tech people, discussing business problems and solutions is cute yet pretty useless. It's funny when you interview someone and he wants to look enthusiastic and tells you the information they found from the open source - and you go like "dude, you have no clue what's happening in these walls" )

I would go even further and say for me it would be a big red flag to waste time on "business impact" - I am going in as a programmer. From my experience, my "business impact" is somewhat close to a cleaner dude. And I don't want to take on additional (unclear) responsibilities I am not sure I know much about. Thank you, but I already know and do enough in my niche which happened to be software development and is a very specialised, demanding and valuable skill to have )

> I would go even further and say for me it would be a big red flag to waste time on "business impact" - I am going in as a programmer. From my experience, my "business impact" is somewhat close to a cleaner dude. And I don't want to take on additional (unclear) responsibilities I am not sure I know much about. Thank you, but I already know and do enough in my niche which happened to be software development and is a very specialised, demanding and valuable skill to have )

This is really going to depend on the company and industry. You're never going to get a senior or principal engineer role at FAANG without being able to explain, or better yet, quantify, what business impact you had through your work as a developer. In non-software verticals where developers are seen as a cost center it's different. But in general, those aren't going to pay as well. Plus you're never going to move up the career ladder if you see yourself exclusively as a developer and don't understand the wider business.

Even in FAANG, do the devs really know the business impact or they just use the business vocabulary to BS around? I mean I can also bullshit anyone about the business impact, I just don't believe that many people (even non-tech) do really know the real business impact. I know for a fact they don't )

It has been my experience and my expectation that Sr. roles in engineering have a grasp of the business and the impact of what they deliver has on it. Jumping roles at a certain level at the likes of a FAANG 100% require that you have created / managed / delivered a project that had business impact.

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