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San Francisco is awesome compared to Missouri. Unless you're a real down-home homebody type - then it may be your worst nightmare. ;-)

$60K is great for 19. As usual there are a bunch of people talking about how it "isn't much for the bay area." But - ignore them. Most people outside of the tech industry in SF don't make $60K, and they get by. Most 19 year olds are making $7/hr, part time.

How to live large on $60K in SF:

- Don't rent your own place at first. It is better to live with roommates. You can rent a room for $600-$1000, depending on how nice of a place you want and what neighborhood you're in.

- If you are working in the city, don't bring a car.

- If your job is in the city, don't live outside the city. Commuting costs aren't too bad, but if you live somewhere far out, like Berkeley or down on the Peninsula, and have to work late, you will get stuck covering a huge Taxi bill from time to time.

- Learn to love cheap food. Burritos, Pho, Bahn mi, pizza slices, etc.

- Being 19, you're too young to go to bars, so you will automatically save a lot of money on the weekends...

- Craig's list, Chinatown and IKEA for all your house stuff

- Costo, Trader Joe's for groceries and sundry items

It should be pretty fun.

I moved to Manhattan when I was 19. Manhattan was and is still way more expensive than SF. I only made $55K, and I managed to save about $10K my first year there, and I went out and did random stuff all the time.

Agreed, definitely find a roommate situation on Craigslist. The process of going around from place to place meeting possible roommates is also a great way to make friends, including friends of a romantic nature, and to get a better feel for the city and how to get around in it.

As for leaving the car at home... I mostly disagree. It's good to get out of the city and go hiking or whatever. You need a car for that.

Most of all, yes, come to SF. Where else can you find things like this: http://superhappydevhouse.org/ ? You won't regret it. Post here again if you are looking for more advice.

I agree that a car is nice for getting out of the city, and I miss my car for exactly that reason. However, parking + parking tickets is going to run you about $300/m. Add in gas + insurance and even the worst car that is fully paid for (like my old car) will cost $500/m.

I switched to City Car Share (www.citycarshare.org) and spend maybe $60 every three months on a car. They have a new plan where you can rent a car for an entire day for $40, which is a good deal. Especially since a 19 year old cannot rent a car from one of the standard car rental places (usually have to be 25+).

In your position, I would take the offer. You get to move from Missouri to one of the world's best cities. SF is one of two cities in America with 24/7 public transportation. Weed is legal, which reflects the extremely socially liberal feel of the city. SF has an actual music scene.

.16% of the company is low. You can try and get more, of course, but the offer as it stands is a great way for you to relocate to SF. If you don't fall in love with this company, you can always find a better job with a different company.

$60,000 is low for an uber-hacker in SF but it's plenty to live, especially when you're relatively young. Get a roommate if you want to live in a decent place in a safe part of town, otherwise, the less safe or more boring parts of town are cheaper. I'm trying to find a place on Craigslist now for an upcoming move to SF... right now I'm looking in the Castro, Mission, and Noe Valley areas. However, few places are available in advance on Craigslist. I think the way it actually works is the place is listed on Craigslist, you go to the open house the next day and beg the landlord to take your deposit, and maybe you can get the place. Things are not nearly as tight outside of SF proper, but there is a reason SF housing is in such high demand.

This is a good overview of SF neighborhoods. http://www.dreamworld.org/sfguide/Neighborhoods/index.html

> weed is legal

What makes you think so?

Email me and I would be happy to elaborate.

Even if it was true that it is outright legal in SF (which it's not) you're ignoring the fact that the feds can bust someone without regard to local laws. This is off topic, but if someone moving to SF took your words at face value they could get into trouble.

>if someone moving to SF took your words at face value

I give the users of this site a lot more credit than that.

+1

Especially a user like Palish who has been around long enough to read rms' comments;-)

In San Francisco, it's legal to possess, but illegal to purchase.

Here is something that I tell a lot of my friends that are looking to get into the "startup" world: You're going to get hosed on your first job.

The pay won't be what it should, you're likely to get a tiny percentage of stock that has a low probability of being worth much in the end. BUT, you'll be in the game, you'll learn a lot, and you'll meet smart people.

From this first experience you will enter into your second startup employment round better educated and in a better position to negotiate.

As long as you can live off the salary for a year or two, and they're covering your relocation, I'd say go for it and enjoy the ride. You can almost always move back to MO and be richer for the experience, if nothing else.

Personally, what you're getting offered seems rather low, but I'm not sure. I know that living on 60k is going to be difficult in San Francisco, but you're young, and may not object to ramen noodles. Look on Craigslist.com to find out what rents are for a room in San Fran before you move out. I know that 60k might seem like a lot when you're 20, but it's really not that much out here in the Bay area.

If you really like the group of programmers, and you really want to move to the Bay, that's worth something, take that into consideration. And, there's always the "chase your dream" scenario that's worth something as well.

As to the stock options: If those are the ratio's, you're not going to be getting much if the company gets acquired. Think about it this way. If there are 3000 shares outstanding, and you get 4 shares, you own %0.13 of the company ( 4/3000). Now, whatever the company gets acquired for, you receive % 0.13 of that amount. So, if the company gets acquired for $10 million, you get $13,000. $100 million, and you get $130,000.

As an aside, there are precious few companies getting acquired for $100 million. There aren't that many acquiring companies that can afford it.

Another issue: There is a lot of competition in the Bay area as opposed to other parts of the country. There are a lot of incredibly smart people out here with several degrees and tons of experience. San Fran has some of the highest per capita Phd's in the nation. It can be a bit intimidating when your first arrive. You go from being one of the elite geeks in your small pond, to being just another techie in a huge ocean of nerds.

I've known a couple of people who came out here, and felt blown away by their own lack of education. It's easy to feel pretty inadequate. Paul Graham can write about the problems with the educational system, but Paul also has his PhD in Computer Science from Harvard. So, take that into consideration, too. He also recommends people finish their college degrees before starting their startups.

I've always been one to chase my dreams, however despite what anyone else said. If you really want it, you'll find a way to make it work.

60K isn't going to make you rich, but unless you acquire a lot of bad habits, its more than enough for a single 19 year old to live off. If you're really worried, you can always find room mates on craigslist.

If this is the industry you want to be in, you're best bet is to make the move out here. The job is reasonable, and even if it doesn't work out there are a hell of a lot more opportunities.

>I know that living on 60k is going to be difficult in San Francisco, but you're young, and may not object to ramen noodles.

$60,000 a year. Let's say it's $42,000 after tax. That gives our pal $3,500 a month. $1600 gets him a very nice studio apartment without roommates and covers utilities (no fiber internet available, unfortunately). He has $1900 a month to buy food, clothing, and entertainment... this would be enough to eat three solid meals a day in mid priced restaurants. Food isn't particularly expensive in San Francisco either, it's not like New York. Doesn't sound like a bad standard of living to me in the slightest, unless I'm missing something.

60k would be doable but lean for someone with a lot of expenses. Student loans, car payment, auto insurance, gas, and medical expenses often take big chunks of income.

For a 19 yr old kid with minimal needs and few fixed expenses, 60k is fine I think. I still might recommend roommates, though you'll want to be picky. In addition to saving a ton on rent, it's nice to have people around especially when you move to a new area.

hmmm... $1900 a month.

Utilities: Cell phone: $40-50 a month easy Internet access: $60 a month Other utilities? Electricity? Water? Garbage? $50-75 Food: $15 a day x 30 days a month= $450 (This is the low end. Have you been to Safeway lately?) going out to eat twice a week for one month? $20 bucks a plate = 160 Cable? $30-60 a month. or $110 a month Comcast cable/high speed bundle.

So, the total for those utilities you're looking at 700-900 a month, unless you can get some of those bundled with your place.

Transportation: Car? $100 a month in insurance on the low end. Car payment?: 300 a month (low end more for a new car) Gas? $100-150 Parking??? To have a car, you're talking a total of 500-700 a month in expenses. It'll be cheaper if you take the Muni, of course, but then you have to factor in occasional cab rides and car rentals if you want to go out of the city.

So, just in expenses, you're talking $1100 - 1800 a month. That doesn't include clothes, any bills that you have to pay like credit cards, or school loans. You will probably have to fly home once or twice a year to visit mom and go to the required family reunion. If you're like me, when you're living on your own in a large city by yourself, you go out a lot more often, and eat out a lot more than twice a week. That also doesn't include emergency expenses like parking tickets, car repairs, a new laptop once a year, World of Warcraft subscription, new IPod, etc...

You could probably manage on 60k a year, but it's going to be really tight. And, if you don't watch out, those credit card bills will start creeping up in a hurry. That's all I'm saying.

Rent usually includes wireless internet around here.

I had never seen so many access points as when I was in San Francisco. You might even get lucky and find a default password WRT-54G that will let you wirelessly flash the firmware.

The offer sounds fair. If you're excited about the people and the company, then you should take the job.

As someone who is around the same age as you, who is also considering going into a computer graphics related field, and has around the same amount of experience, I would love to get an offer like that once I graduate. Sure, 60k might be a little low for the SF area, but who really cares that much? It takes care of the basics, and thats all you'll really need (I assume you're not looking to start a family any time soon). You'll be living in an awesome city (where a lot of people in the field dream of living), getting a load of new experience, and working with people who will probably teach you more than you could learn on your own in the same amount of time.

From my own experience I've found the percentage your looking at, 0.166, to be about the industry average for a software engineer joining around the 10th person.

In the sense that many people on this forum are the uber-productive hackers described by PG in essay form, the industry average is low.

Not if it's what the market bears.

Sure -- I am saying that the industry average is low for an uber-hacker, because he or she is worth more... this gets us to the Grahamian theory of business, where the only way to get paid what you are worth is to start a company.

I am saying that the industry average is low for an uber-hacker...

I don't have any direct knowledge of palish's qualifications, and I certainly mean him no disrespect -- but his self-description (19 years old, programming for 7 years, high school drop-out) doesn't exactly scream "uber-hacker" to me.

Sure. I guess all I am saying is that members of this forum and YC applicants are much more likely to be uber-hackers than your average corporate developer. It's not an overly meaningful statement, but I'm pretty sure it is true because of strong outliers like yourself.

If I had to pick 10 applicants for a software company and I knew nothing about them except whether or not they had accounts here, I would take 9 news.yc'ers and one other, just in case.

Hiring someone based solely on the fact that they read this site seems like a pretty awful idea to me. Of course, if you knew nothing about them except whether or not they had an account here, the results would likely be fairly random.

I'm not. But I do my best and learn more every day.

Right, and (speaking as a 26 year old with a doctorate in CS) what you've done is quite impressive for a 19 year old. But you have to compare this job offer to the other jobs available to you -- not compare it to the jobs available to other YCers (which is, in effect, what you're doing by asking what other YCers would do in this situation).

That's been about my experience too. It's almost exactly what I got (stock-wise; my salary was about half that) when I joined a startup at age 19 as the 13th employee.

I'd say take the offer. $60k isn't a huge amount in the Bay Area (the cost of living is crazy here), but it's definitely enough to live on if you're 19. ~0.1% equity is also a bit on the low side.

BUT, I think the most important factor is the experience. If the guys you're going to be working with are top-class and if you think you'll learn a lot (sounds like it), then take the job and don't worry about the compensation too much. Working with intelligent colleagues is the best way to become a better hacker, not to mention making great networking contacts and positioning yourself for a higher-paying job down the line. When you're just starting your career, 60k vs. 75k doesn't make nearly as much of a difference as working with "B" coworkers vs. working with "A+" superstars.

As far as living in SF, there's a big difference between living in San Francisco itself and living in the SF Bay Area. SF will be somewhat more expensive, but it's a blast when you're young, and I'm guessing a big upgrade from Missouri. The Bay Area is a lot more suburban; there's less culture, and you typically need to go to San Francisco or San Jose if you want to go out.

You are still extremely young. Now is the time to take risks and make moves, while it is still a high priority for you.

60k is enough to live on. A small percentage of the company is enough to make it extra lucrative.

What I would personally use the experience for was seeing how the industry works, meeting people with similar interests as you and people you would want to work again in the future.

Good luck!

I just found a room in a house in SF -- $900 covers utilities, internet, furnishings and rent. It's in the Mission, a well liked neighborhood.

An overlooked part of SF life is people who are sick of living in a city. They want to go to bed at a reasonable hour, know their neighbours and feel like a handshake can close a deal. I've never had to submit a credit report to a landlord.

However, most of my computer/finance friends (late twenties) have not had the same experience -- because of the company they keep. Do not hang out with other posh kids the time! They aren't much involved with the City and know little but the bars.

As far as a car goes, definitely don't bring one with you. On the few occasions when you need to drive, you can rent a car for a few hours (one service is called ZipCar, there are others) and then be done with it.

Food in SF is good -- as good as any city in the States, and some items (wines, of course, but also bread and cheeses and chipotles) have international renown.

Shawn,

Two thing to consider about stock options: dilution and additional options grant.

You can be diluted at any time. That is the company can award additional shares and options that will make your 4 shares a smaller part of the pie.

In theory, this should only happen if the person getting the extra shares puts more money into the company, so you will have a smaller share of a bigger pie.

In practice, it doesn't have to be. You can just get a smaller share of the same pie...

On the other hand, should you prove you worth to the company, it is customary that you will get additional options granted later on, as the company will want to keep you interested and motivated.

For an early stage startup, both have an even chance of happening.

I've had both happen to me (with the same startup). By the time the startup was bought I had a bigger option grant then I started with - but it was worth much less due to dilution.

Bottom line: the amount or portion of stocks you are granted when you start working is meaningless or close to meaningless.

But I'd take the job anyway. San Fran is cool.

Good luck! gby

It's also worth noting that there are usually "common" and "preferred" shares. Between employees and investors, you can guess who gets which type, and which type gets paid first in an equity event.

hey dude,

I'm a 20 year old guy in almost the same shoes as you, except I dropped out freshman year of college. $60k sounds cool, definitely a good net ~15000$ more than the $40k I am getting, but I have no idea what SF living costs are ( i live in a suburb of a small metro with 4 roomies for $300/mo ).

Do you plan on getting rich with them when you say "I'd simply like to find an interesting project and then really throw myself at it", or do you plan on starting your own thing? I've worked at 2 jobs (both enterprise; one was crazy hours and high pay when I was 19 (yup, red bulls all day), and the one I have now is very smooth at 9-5), and I can honestly say that I haven't found any truly interesting projects at either of them. If the answer is yes, and you think they have a good shot at getting rich within 4 years, the $60k should be a small factor in your decision.

What's the alternative in MO? At 19 I would say the biggest question is if you are ready to go out and live on your own.

It seems like a good opportunity to jump into the scene.

60K seems like good money for an entry-level game programming job. I wouldn't count on any profit sharing or equity to be worth anything. If it is, great, but don't count on it.

The game industry is organized kind of like the music industry. Small studios are the bands to the publisher's record companies. Small studios (typically under-funded and over-ambitious) beg the big guys for money to work on projects. They often get screwed. Fight to get your name in the credits of any game you release. OTOH, many many games never get released.

Hm. Re-reading your post, it occurs to me that the startup may not be a game company.

If you like the idea and the people, you should definitely come out and give it a shot. The stock offer seems slim, but I don't know how old the company is. What it really comes down to is deciding if you'll like the company and people you're working with, since almost everyone likes the bay area as a place to live. So come visit, meet the guys, see the area, and decide after that.

Ask the questions listed in this post (it was linked to YC some time ago): http://www.genuinevc.com/archives/2005/10/seven_questions.ht....

I agree with rms though. Just remember that you should choose the next step based on whether you're going to learn something new. If you are, take it.

At 19, absolutely. At my age, no, because I've turned down better offers.

As far as the salary goes, it's a bit lower than what a college graduate would expect from a startup in the area, but it might be fair for your age (depending on benefits). You might be able to push for either more stock or more pay... the job market is very tight for good developers around here.

According to salary.com, $60k in San Francisco gives you the same standard of living as $28k in St.Louis, MO. How does that compare to what you're earning right now? I'm guessing that it's considerably less.

Now, how much do you think the company will end up being worth? $10M? $50M? $100M? Divide that number by 2000 and that's what your annual stock grant could be worth -- in the above cases, $5k/year, $25k/year, or $50k/year -- but remember that you won't get that money until the company has a "liquidity event".

Is what you've calculated your potential stock windfall to be worth enough to balance out the fact that your salary will provide for a lower standard of living over the next few years than you're used to? There's your answer.

Those "standard of living" comparisons are silly and misleading. It's better to just calculate your actual expenses (as others here have done). I'd much rather live off of $60k in SF than $28k in St Louis.

Go for it. The object is to get in the game. I am assuming you have checked out your company and seriously awesome fellas means they have quantifiable accomplishments. Have you negotiated with them at all? 100% of the shots you dont take, dont go in. Tell then you will accept the offer if they can up the salary to $70K. Wait and see what they say. read this http://tinyurl.com/2bb8ve

If it were me, I would want more than .1% of the total shares. I don't live in California, but how competitve is that salary for what you'll be doing?

Press for more stock.

don't worry about making $60k. i'm 26, i've lived in SF for a few years, and i started bootstrapping my own startup earlier this year on a (post-tax) budget of ~$2400/mo, including a studio apartment and health insurance. i'm sure you can do better than me. :)

As for compensation, I think everybody who comes to the Bay Area gets somewhat screwed in their first job here. Once you get a foothold here and start making contacts, you can easily find something that pays more.

finish high school and then college (and a startup on the side if you like). if this offer doesn't work out, a degree is a nice thing to fall back on and is required for larger careers down the line. and with a degree you can expect and ask for a higher salary. just my thoughts.

Far be it from me to argue against higher ed -- I spent thirteen of the best years of my life in college, if you count the postdoctoral fellowship -- but if I were you I would take the job now and go to college later. There's plenty of time, and it's not like they stop letting you in to college because you're too old.

The thing about getting some work experience before you go to school is that it may make you a better student. You'll have a better idea of what you want to learn and why. You'll be better equipped to recruit future colleagues from among your fellow students, and you'll have better war stories to tell them when you're sitting at the bar.

The idea that "a degree is a nice thing to fall back on" is true, but the reverse is even more true: If your career falters, you can always go to college. (If you have the money, of course... but if you won't have the money then, you probably don't have the money now either!)

I would think long and hard about this one. College just ain't the same if you go when you're 30. You've got your whole life to mind your career.

Well, yes, I'm sure that college is much different as a 30-year-old with a nice car, the right to buy beer legally, a worldly-wise attitude and a pile of money saved up from your ten-year hacking career. For one thing, girls may actually want to talk to you!

But, seriously: I agree that the college experience may be most enjoyable when you're in your twenties, if only because that's how old most of the other students are. You may not want to be so old that you feel a generation gap with your own classmates. But the guy is nineteen. He's got eleven years to go before he's thirty. He can afford to work at three or four startups and still graduate from college before he's thirty.

it's better to regret something you did than something you didn't do. go for it.

In fact, my experience is that most people regret what they "didn't do" rather than what they did.

This is true. The problem with the logic is that everything has an opportunity cost (i.e. if you're doing one thing, there's something else that you're not doing). So on the face of things, using this argument to advise someone trying to choose between a few mutually exclusive options is tantamount to saying nothing at all.

For example, suppose that in the near term the OP will either move to San Francisco for this startup or attend college.

If he takes this full-time job, he'll miss out on the unique educational and social opportunity that is going to college full-time.

If he takes this opportunity to go to college, he'll miss out on the unique educational and social opportunity that is working on a startup full-time.

Obviously these two seem symmetrical. I'd argue, though, that after going to college for four years, it would actually be easier to replicate the startup experience he'd miss now than it would be to replicate the college experience four years from now when he'll be "the old guy" in his freshman dorm. Unless he's Van Wilder, that may not be the best social situation in the world.

Of course, this is all a red herring if he's not interested in going to college right now.

An Offer