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Comment by morgante | Hacker News Reader

The world isn't nearly as binary as that.

I'm not a VC or founder. I'm a developer just like you, trying to deliver cool products—but doing so requires more developers.

If my company was trying to suppress wages, or refused to pay above market, then I'd agree with you that we have no right to ask for more talent. But we're perfectly willing to pay for talent—we just can't find any.

I wouldn't be surprised if the number of senior developers on the market was less than 10% of the number of open positions.

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So the thing is, I share your general opinion -- there is a legit shortage of talented developers, and it's hard to find them.

BUT: I guarantee you that there is in fact a wage and benefits package you can offer that would get you more good applicants. Maybe it's more money (sure, "above market" is nice, but I'm not going to leave a job for $5K more than my "market" rate -- but for $50K more, well, let's talk). Maybe it's perks and benefits (the Google package, for instance).

Whatever it is, there is absolutely money you can spend that would end up getting you noticeably more applicants one way or the other. That the company doesn't WANT to spend that money is exactly what bothers people.

And yes, yes, it's all well and good to say that developers are paid and treated well -- they are -- but if their talent and skill is really that rare and that in-demand, maybe they should be paid and treated even better.

Okay, let's assume we were willing to offer substantially higher salaries than the market (though the practicalities of our funding certainly limits that to some degree).

How would we communicate said information in a way that doesn't actively distort the hiring process? When was the last time you saw a job ad with salary listed?

Put it in the ad. It's not common, but it's not super-rare, either. And the main reason you don't do it is that you don't want to eliminate your chance at hiring someone at a below-market rate (or of alerting your below-market-rate current employees that they're being screwed and should be getting big raises). If you're committed to paying the rates you'd need to pay to get good talent, then put that upfront.

See above: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8805687

This is what I'm running into right now. Our CEO will not buy health insurance or computers for Dev. In a second breath, he gloats about paying people damn near nothing because they 'want to work in the industry.'

Where are you based? It seems absurd to not buy (great) computers for developers, at least by NYC startup standards.

I am currently looking at jobs in NYC. With 2 years of experience I am fielding offers between 60k-80k in a cheap state to live in. Two comments above you make great points: (1) Developers should be making more than what they are and (2) Why should startups be entitled to cheap labor?

That being said my point is if I had the 5+ years of experience you probably are looking for and was moving to NYC I would expect to be making 150k+. Which if that is what you are offering, great. But if it's not then you can find the talent you are looking for, you just can't afford it.

> (1) Developers should be making more than what they are

As a developer, I'd love to agree with this. In fact, I do. But in our experience this isn't directly related to the talent shortage (again, we have never been unable to make a compelling offer to a candidate).

> (2) Why should startups be entitled to cheap labor?

I don't think they should be. All our senior devs have generous compensation which easily adds up to $150k+.

You've never been unable to make a compelling offer to a candidate you've attracted to apply in the first place.

What about those you haven't?

You're right that our biggest challenge is in getting people to apply in the first place.

What do you think is the highest value of deploying monetary and other resources to make that happen, given that publicly listing salaries is a non-starter?

If you want the benefit of offering significantly above market salaries, at some point you've got to let it be known that you're doing that. Secretly paying people a lot of money won't attract new talent.

Does your employer use the lots of startupland hiring phrases, like "we're looking for passionate rockstars who believe in our mission to change the world through payroll software"?

A lot of the phrases in vogue right now seem to indicate companies that want employees that work 80 hour weeks and pay entry level salaries. Have you tried "competitive compensation" or some other non-numerical indicator that you guys pay well or phrases that indicate you guys have a professional vs. passionate culture?

I think our job listings are quite fair and free of "startup" phrases. We emphasize the actual problems you'll be working on and try to communicate that we pay professional salaries for professionals.

Then again, I wrote them. So you can see for yourself: http://www.cafe.com/careers

"I think our job listings are quite fair and free of 'startup' phrases."

Just looked at your "Lead Engineer" listing. It says: "We offer a great startup work environment with free beer, snacks, and friendly teammates." That sounds more like a typical startup that expects people to work there for the fun experience than a workplace that wants to attract highly-paid professionals.

And the offer of free beer makes it sound like a frat party. Maybe that's a turn-off to women who don't want to work in a place full of drunken guys. Maybe it's a turn-off to guys who want to have a life outside of work. Skip the free beer and make sure your employees have enough free time after work to get a beer outside if they want to.

150k is pretty bad for a senior dev in NYC fyi. Perhaps you have answered your own question.

Banks will pay at least 2x more and large tech companies closer to that than what you are offering.

Note I'm not talking about truly great developers, merely good senior ones.

I'm not sure I agree, especially when you factor in substantial equity. We have interviewed numerous people from banks and large tech companies and our salaries certainly don't seem out of whack.

For reference, $150k is right on target according to AngelList data: https://angel.co/salaries

Maybe the AngelList data is why startups have trouble finding good engineers? There is no good way of finding out what a good developer should get, and that is because the companies (including yours) like it that way.

I only have anecdotal data, I don't think many people have more, but I am very sure a decent senior dev can get way more than what you are offering.

I think there is more to a job than just the salary, but at least be open about the fact that there are open positions doing similar work in the same city offering significantly more.

"especially when you factor in substantial equity"

Unless your company ends up being the next Google or Facebook (which is a statistically unlikely outcome for any startup), your "substantial equity" may never be worth any significant amount of money. Living in NYC is expensive, and you can't pay your rent with stock options.

To somebody who watched the equity bubble unfold in '99-00, this is what a labor shortage looks like.

To you, that "substantial equity" might be a real cost, but to the applicant it's essentially a lottery ticket. The expected value of your equity is zero. I've worked in many silicon valley firms that offered stock options but the only time one ended up having any value to me was as a bargaining chip - I was able to tell the next firm that wanted to hire me "gee, I'd love to take your offer but if I leave now I'm giving up all these unvested options worth lots of imaginary money" which helped negotiate a signing bonus.

Most companies fail, making their stock options worthless. And even the few companies that succeed usually hit bumps in the road that dilute the stock options or put their value underwater.

So if you have a reason to think your idea of "substantial equity" is much more likely than average to ever be worth anything at all, you should make that fact a key part of your pitch. (Or if you're indifferent between equity and salary, offer more salary and less equity.)

>I don't think they should be. All our senior devs have generous compensation which easily adds up to $150k+.

I once got messaged on LinkedIn by a Bloomberg/banking guy looking for me to contract with them in New York at a rate of $144,000/year, and I'm comparatively junior. A properly senior developer, someone with something like 7-10 years of experience in industry, should definitely be making a bunch more than some guy offers me off-the-cuff when trying to recruit on LinkedIn -- especially in an expensive area like NYC!

> I once got messaged on LinkedIn by a Bloomberg/banking guy looking for me to contract with them in New York at a rate of $144,000/year, and I'm comparatively junior.

We have successfully hired people from Bloomberg and finance (including competitive compensation).

One thing to keep in mind is that contracting is very different from full time. $150k is low for senior contractors but normal for senior developers (annualized, I expect senior developer consultants to be making more than $200k if they're based in NYC).

I'm going to concur with selmnoo, but be less rude about it: sorry, but those are the rules of the game. However hard a time you're having finding senior developers, the incentive to produce them domestically gets skewed downwards, making the problem worse in the long term, if we let you "patch" the issue temporarily with immigration rather than signaling higher demand to the market with rising salaries.

Of course, your firm can also do its own part to fix the problem directly: hire more junior candidates and train them up. Yes, I realize this is quite difficult for your situation, but consider that if few to no companies train junior developers into senior ones, that explains why there are so few senior developers on the market.

And then there's the housing shortages around NYC and SF that make land rent eat up most salary rises -- that's worth an entire post in itself.

Training is part of the solution, but I truthfully don't think that can be driven by startups. We might not even be around years from now to receive the rewards from our investment in junior developers.

More practically, I wouldn't feel right hiring junior developers when I don't think we'd be giving them the best training given our current staffing levels and product needs. Since we already have too few senior devs, I'm not sure I could justifiably ask the team to take on the additional burden of mentoring junior developers (though I do hope we can start a robust training program once the dev team is a bit larger).

This is nonsense. I am part of a 5 person company and we do training in the form of mentoring, helping each other, etc.

Training is a benefit - not a cost.

We of course help each other, but bringing on a junior developer is absolutely considered an investment. There is a tangible decrease in the amount of time senior developers have available for other tasks, not to mention the cost of any off-site training we might invest in.

Using that logic, you could say immigration laws are actually what are making the problem worse in the long term - by temporarily keeping salaries higher than what they otherwise would be.

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