You have the power to effect that outcome, and giving up that power makes me a decent amount less likely to enjoy working with you.
You can have a positive impact, yes, but put what you have control over first. Your happiness and compensation that you get twice a month.
I dug into this and was surprised to learn that salaries are paid every fortnight in USA.
I wonder why. Does anybody know if this is the case even in FAANG companies?
Where I'm from it's paid monthly. I think I prefer that.
If I were to get my income every day, that would be very boring. On the other hand if I were to get my income once in 6 months, that would be horrifying.
But 1 month seems to be a sweet spot. Double the amount half as often.
Other utility bills come in monthly in my country (which is in Asia by the way), so that's a factor as well.
But yeah, I can now kind of see the appeal of getting paid every 2 weeks.
Now, this CA law actually does not apply to most tech-employees (which will be consider "exempt employees" - which also means that they do not have to be paid overtime). But in my experiences, employers don't want to run separate payment processes for exempt/non-exempt employees - so everyone gets paid twice a month.
I get that employers are following rules. But I wonder why there is such a rule in place.
I also, in that time, spent a lot of time working with people who had zero incentive to build software that solved the problems facing the company; they clocked in at 9, built their little piece, and clocked out at 5.
These people were awful to work with because they refused to consider beyond their tickets, and didn't care if what they built actually connected back to the company's problem. They'd actively get upset if challenged or pushed in any way, and often cited the desire for a "good work/life balance" as the chief reason.
So now, because of that experience, I look for people who are hungrier, who want asymptotic upside, and who can actually see why they're being asked to do what they're being asked to do.
It sounds like you just want to work with good, conscientious, developers. This has nothing to do with equity.
I never said you shouldn't try to do a good job. I said you should try to be paid fairly.
I like the equity incentive structure; rather than incentivizing time-based work (work two weeks, get paid two weeks and that's it), you make more based on how well you're able to effect outcomes at an organization level. Make the company more successful, make yourself more successful.
It attracts people who want to be paid fairly for their high skill level. If you clock in/clock out, you'll make nothing. If you actually do the right work and value tangible org-wide results, you'll make way more.
I like to do a good job and work hard because I __enjoy it__. But I'm not going to work for peanuts in exchange for a chance to make more in the future unless it's my own company.
I very much dislike this learned helplessness you're trying to virtuize. You absolutely have control over your outcomes, and I don't really want to work with people who don't agree with that sentiment.
There is no guarantee you'll make more money if you do well. It helps, yes, but it's not good to mislead people. Yes, I've doubled compensation at companies by doing a good job, but there is a lot more to it than that.
You can build the best software in the world but if you have a crap sales team your performance doesn't matter.
If you're going to make that kind of investment and expect to have a return in the future you have to analyze the companies you work at like an investor would, and that's just the first step.
It's always possible to try to do great work and to push the company in a great direction. That's great, and yes people like this are great to work with. However, stock options are nearly always structured to keep money away from employees rather than rewarding them. Some of the structure is due to the tax laws, but plenty of it is due to the terms companies set for their stock options.
You seem to be confusing these two things.
I mean yeah, if you don't know those things sure, it becomes a lot harder to understand, but I've been given that information when I've asked so far, and I would pass that information along now as well.
Thus, either stock option compensation must be much larger than salary, or it should, as GP suggests, be counted as a potential bonus and nothing more.