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Comment by runako | Hacker News Reader

>> co-founders should be paid living expenses + 25%, even in a series-A funded startup

It's risky to comment without knowing the specifics of Joel's situation. But it seems that his $158k salary isn't outside those bounds if he lives in e.g. San Francisco or NYC. Hard to know someone's living expenses without drilling way into their personal financials, and again this is not unreasonably high.

Thiel, from the link you posted:

>> What’s the average salary for CEOs from funded startups? Thiel was hesitant to answer, but eventually said “$100-125k.”

That was in 2008. Adjust for rent inflation, and that should square the numbers for you.

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Sure, that's a generalization. There are tons of exceptions where my generalization doesn't apply. But that isn't the core of my argument- its a postscript.

The math the company has laid out says that CEOs should be paid more than any employee in a company, even if they are founders and have a controlling equity stake. I'm simply saying that if I were an investor or employee, I would find that concerning.

I worked in finance and made less than that in salary.

It's enough for a luxurious existence in NYC provided you don't have children. I'm not sure whether or not they have children, but that's a lot.

$150k is middle class in NYC. If you work in Manhattan, it's a small place with a short commute or a normal-size place (by national standards) with a long commute.

If you don't work in Manhattan or can work from home most of the time, you can have a pretty luxurious lifestyle, yes.

Also, being single with no one to support isn't the average case. I'd argue we should assume that each working person supports one other person. That lines up with American demographics much better.

$150k is only middle class in NYC in the weakest possible sense of the phrase “middle class”. Even if we restrict to manhattan, $150k puts you in the top ~20% of household income (which often includes two wage-earners). Median income in Manhattan is right around $70k. I know that nearly everyone in America (except maybe for Bill Gates) believes that they are middle class, but at some stage one needs to accept that if you make whole-number multiples above the median wage, you are at the very least “upper middle class” or “well off”. To pretend otherwise is frankly a bit insulting to the actual middle class.

Yes, there are people making vastly more than $150k, but that doesn’t change the fact that it puts one solidly in the upper quartile.

Yep. For less than that amount I had a floor of a brownstone in Brooklyn, 20-30 minute commute via subway, paid off 10 year student loans in < 1 year, took my entire family on a vacation, and went out to dinner at a variety of nice restaurants on a fairly regular interval. I also saved up 30K in liquid assets (Although that includes some cash from 1-2 years before).

It's that's "only" middle class, the world is in serious trouble.

Sounds middle class to me. Having a few months expenses in the bank and a 30 minute commute. Checks out modulo crime rate and quality of local public schools, both of which vary a lot in Brooklyn.

How long have you lived in New York?

What does the term of a loan have to do with anything? It's a meaningless metric in your context.

That's just what we call the loan where I'm from.

It's the loan I took out to pay for my 4 year undergraduate university education in it's entirety.

Is that better?

Fair enough, but that's beside the point.

I was referring to what that salary gets you in terms of standard of living and so on. Cost of living in all of New York, Manhattan especially, is high. $70k doesn't get you very far in Manhattan, especially if you don't have multiple roommates (which you wouldn't if you had a family).

Contrast that to what a family can do with $70k in Cleveland, San Antonio, or Raleigh. It looks closer to what $150k looks like in Manhattan, which is my point.

And a net worth of $500M is lower class when you restrict your population to that of all people with net worths >= $500M (there are many thousands of such people).

This is so laughable. The median salary in NYC is $50,000 per household. This includes tons of people who work in Manhattan (I've met more people who work in Manhattan and live in other boroughs than otherwise - the daily commute numbers back that up.) As another poster mentioned, even just Manhattanites make $70,000 a year for the household. I personally know many people living in Manhattan making far less.

$150k is most definitely upper middle class. I grew up in Queens my whole life and until I started working professionally, never met someone who made more than $150,000 a year.

Sure, upper middle class. What's wrong with a CEO making upper middle class wages? The point is it's respectable wages for a professional, but hardly as high-on-the-hog as $150k in Kansas City.

In the context of discussing a company that lets employees work remotely, it is precisely as high-on-the-hog as $150k in KC. Remote employees in NYC choose to live there, because they think it’s a good tradeoff. If employees A and B both make $150k in Kansas City, but A cooks all his meals and B goes out to eat all the time, that doesn’t make A high-on-the-hog and B middle class; it just means that they value different things. Ditto for remote workers who choose to live in NYC.

In SF, close to 50% in taxes, cost of living in SOMA, assuming you want to live right by your office (what is it, 3k for a studio?) and those 160k will not get you very far.

> In SF, close to 50% in taxes

When I moved to SF from Alabama, I lost ~1->5% more of my paycheck to taxes. Note that Alabama is a dirt cheap place to live, and that I get so much more from that tax money in SF.

Yes, the taxes here are bad if you compare them to Washington or some other low-tax haven... but they're really not that bad here.

Also, yes, rent is insane in the city. More apartments must be built!

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