Comment by cedsav | Hacker News Reader

Comment by cedsav | Hacker News Reader

Web UX Engineer - REMOTE or Bloomington, Indiana, United States - [$60K - $80K]

We're looking for a UX engineer, with an eye for clean design and usability, and strong technical skills (HTML, CSS, Javascript)

We run FormAssembly.com, a SaaS that helps enterprises build online forms and power their business processes without the need for IT.

We're bootstrapped, profitable, growing rapidly, and hiring employee #15 and beyond!

We embrace remote work. Our team is spread across 3 different countries. You're welcome of course to move to Bloomington, Indiana, where the majority of the team is located. It's been named one of the best cities for doing business and perhaps more importantly, is the #7 in the US for best places to bike!

We run a lean operation with an impressive roster of customers, so your work will not go unnoticed. Everything you'll work on will make our customers happier and give us a better competitive edge.

Position is full-time, local or remote. Pay range is $60K - $80K, stock options negotiable.

To apply, go to http://formassembly.workable.com/jobs/25749 or email jobs [at] formassembly.com

Thank you for being the the only listing with salary information.

You're welcome. Maybe next month we'll see a salary range on all posts?

Most people, including myself, won't bother applying to a position unless the salary range is posted.

There's no point to doing 2, 3, or even 4 interviews for a job that potentially pays less.

Employers should learn that lesson.

For what it's worth, even though I haven't usually posted a salary range, it's something I try to clear up in the first call. It's true it's a waste of everybody's time otherwise.

We'll see if that posting the range this time will make any difference.

Seems like it would be especially important for jobs where the pay is scaled for a market such as Bloomington, Indiana but remote is okay.

As someone who has lived in San Diego for 14 years it is really easy to forget that lots of people can afford to live comfortably* on $60-80k when they don't live here or in the SF Bay Area, etc.

(* or, for that matter, extremely well, depending upon where they do actually live).

Employers have a tendency to set salaries based on a combination of prior salaries and the market for the area unfortunately, which makes listing a hard number difficult.

I think there are two reasons not to post the salary range right away.

1. There is always flexibility in the budget for the right people.

I'm hiring engineers to my team right now and I have a clear number I got from my CEO. I am confident that budget will fit the ideal candidate that I'm trying to hire. But on the other hand, if someone more senior, or junior blows my mind, I'm willing to push for the extra numbers for the more senior, or the extra rack for the junior to get on my team.

2. Salary is not everything.

I do believe salary is important, but not everything. There are a good number of people who are willing to take a job with less salary if they feel they can grow there more, the culture fits them better and the potential of company is bigger there.

I do understand though it is frustrating doing multiple interviews without knowing if the salary range is close to the expectations or not. If a candidate asks me on the initial phone screening about the numbers I am happy to talk about it openly.

> 1. There is always flexibility in the budget for the right people.

Nothing stopping you from tacking on that caveat after offering a range so people can grok you from a distance.

> 2. Salary is not everything. > I do believe salary is important, but not everything. There are a good number of people who are willing to take a job with less salary if they feel they can grow there more, the culture fits them better and the potential of company is bigger there.

The only people willing to take that cut are

(a) young enough not to be thinking about retirement, and

(b) people naive enough to think you having a good culture lets you off the hook for being a cheapskate.

Disclaimer: used to think salary wasn't everything after $x quality of living, now I'm a bit older, a bit wiser and looking at retirement. I now think I was a huge idiot in my younger years for not taking every advantage possible. - So take my views with a grain of disillusioned salt.

It's also signalling. Higher salary both means the company can afford it (i.e. is stronger, healthier, a safer long term bet) and that the position is valued (as the company is willing to invest more in it).

Couldn't agree with you more. Higher salaries very much represent a company's ability and desire to pay top dollar. I do caution on the long term bet. It's not as solid as may seem. I've come across many companies who throw money at the problem of not being able to attract/retain talent with market rate range salaries. Could be a number of reasons, including politics, lack of interesting projects, unsustainable culture, etc.

Another major point to keep in mind is salary today vs growth in coming years. Getting a high salary today may bring with it unrealistic expectations. It may be your future bonus and raises that suffer. Your annual review will roll around and the managerial perception will be that you're already paid more than everyone on the team, so you're not getting a notable slice of the budget.

My point is that things aren't always black and while, and long term may be not as advantageous as they seem. If you're looking for a career, hoping jobs every year will not help. Becomes a red flag on the resume.

Really? Don't go for the maximum salary because you might be disappointed in future raises?

Do you know why companies discourage job hopping and sharing your salary with coworkers (even though just mentioning a bias against sharing that information is illegal)? Because it costs them money if employees do it (i.e. it's good for employees)!

Sure, throwing money at a problem isn't a way to solve it and companies that think it is are bad news, but the rest of your advise is horrible.

Your points are valid and I would not disagree with anyone who is prioritizing salary over growing opportunity.

But I do believe though that there are people who are in that stage of their lives where they can take the risk of joining a company where they can grow faster, have a bigger potential financial outcome for the price of taking less monthly paycheck in the short term.

Personally, probably because I am younger, would take an opportunity for less $$$ where I do believe I can learn more, making me more valuable in the long run so eventually I can make more money. I think about it as an investment of my time that someone either willing to / can do, or not.

I do understand that not everyone can take this risk and I think that is perfectly fine.

> making me more valuable in the long run so eventually I can make more money

Sorry to burst your bubble, but the "more money" from experience gained while taking a paycut will pale in comparison to "more money" from the number of years you state on your cv and dollar value of your last salary.

In perhaps clearer words, taking a paycut for career growth will most likely just prohibit your potential future salaries regardless of how much technical experience you gained.

This of course all changes considerably when you're talking founding/early employee where minimum wage is a real possibility..

Many new job posts now including salary range. I think this is a great start.

This thread, and even forum, may not be the best place to get salary information first. Reason being, is this is a YC-related forum, full of early stage start ups, who are looking for core team members. A key attribute of key members is to be excited about the problem the company is solving first.

Salary is a very reasonable point of interest when it comes to new opportunities. This may not be the right place to seek those opportunities. Glassdoor, dice, craigslist may suit your needs much better.

Simply being blunt, if all you care about is a paycheck and hopefully writing great code, being Engineer #X at a start up is not for you. Every early member needs to be a natural advocate for the company.

There's also a middle ground between posting salaries on listing and going through 4 rounds of interviews. Companies don't want to waste their time either. You can also easily find out salary ranges for many of the jobs posted by looking at angellist.com.

In the end, if you and a company are a great match for each other, the compensation package will be much less of an obstacle.

Do you really want to miss the opportunity of a lifetime by skipping a company that simply doesn't post salaries?

to be blunt as well , I am pretty sure that you primarily want my skills to help you solve your problem , being excited and not capable will not get you far which you can see from 99% of poorly executed startups go cheap will not get you far and from history we know how drinking kool aid ends up

I completely agree that being excited and not capable will not get the engineer and the company far. Yet being capable and only interested in the paycheck will not make an engineer understand the customer and what the problem being solved is.

In a start up with a team of 10 or less (including all roles), it's critical everyone is excited about what the start up is doing.

Actually if you look at the history of success stories, the core team was always filled with those who believed the vision. Start ups that have failed, most likely did not fail due to the team having too much passion for their product.

there are couple misconceptions here

99% of startups don't solve hard problems (it seem hard to them because they are inexperienced and excited but in all reality not so challenging ) , that doesn't mean they don't have good business idea but technical aspect is mostly easy , challenges usually come with scale which happens later

financial upside for 0.2% equity end 100Mil exit is --> 200000 at best and that is not much so where is that upside for somebody taking 80K instead 140k over 4 years ? Not to mention that probability of that happening is low to start with

in small startup it would be essential to have extremely qualified people , excitement should be secondary

I do what I do because I love it but that doesn't mean I have to do that for free or cheap so correlation between asking for fair price and not being excited (passionate) about what you do is mostly not there

I worked in couple of startups (last one had exit 500Mil) but I was paid market rate and that is mostly a reason why they succeeded (got high quality people knowing exactly what they are doing)

This conversation is about early stage start ups. That's pre-series A. Post-series-A salaries do go back to market rate.

If the start up you worked at was sold for 500Mil while on a seed round - that's amazing! ...but I doubt it.

Did you join before Series A? For how many years did the start up exist before you joined? And how many years did it exist before it was sold?

shortly after A financing , existed 2 years , and 3 years after was exit , I don't know what were salaries before , but it was < 30 people when I joined

anyhow it is just a datapoint and most likely outlier

Why do you assume that if I care about the money, I only care about the money. You are making money from this business, so I expect you to pay me for my contribution what I think I am worth.

This attitude that startups are doing engineers a favor by hiring them is hurting the startups themselves.

Translation. I have serious problems that need solving. You have the skills to do it. How much I value that is a TOTAL SECRET but almost certainly MUCH LESS THAN YOU DESERVE. Please beg for me to hire you now.

You're correct about start ups having serious problems that need solving and a good match in a candidate having the skills to do it.

The rest is far from it. The value of those skills to the start up is not a secret. Posting a range in a job listing doesn't convey to a potential candidate what his skills are valued at.

How much you deserve is determined by the biggest offer you can get. Compensation packages for early stage start ups aren't "cheap" as many on this thread tend to call. If all you care about is the salary, then early stage start ups are simply not for you. This is what I was attempting to convey in my original reply. This isn't a negative thing. If you think equity is worthless (which is how these packages are supplemented for the salary), then instead of getting offended that a start up is trying to rip you off, enjoy working at a bigger company that has the deep pockets for the salary you believe you deserve.

An early stage start up has a very limited amount of funds and time to develop their idea into its next stage. For each idea, there is a very unique combination of time, money, and resources. Paying the salaries benchmarked by companies that have billions at their disposal, will make a start up burn through their small amount of money, without ever having enough resources, in much less time than needed.

Reading about companies like Uber, Dropbox, Pinterest, and other big names get fortune-level valuations leads to misconceptions that these companies are still start ups and other start ups have the same capital.

Early stage start ups are companies you most likely haven't heard of yet. If you listen to a podcast course from Stanford by Sam Altman, you'll learn that it takes many years to build up a start up.

All this leads me back to my original statement: if you're looking for top-level salaries, don't care about equity, and think that believing in the product/vision is a joke, you shouldn't be looking at job postings on Hacker News.

Ya'll complain about how hard it is to hire and at the same time brag about how it's about the experience, baby, forget the salary!

You're basically self-selecting for financially stable people with no dependents which... yeah, that's what the startup world looks like, with its attendant diversity baggage.

Half our team has kids, and most of our team comes from a variety of countries half way around the world.

99% of candidates don't even get into the salary discussion phase. It's hard to hire because candidates think they know more than they really do. Some have 5 years experiences, many have 1 year experience five times.

>99% of candidates don't even get into the salary discussion phase.

So these are all people who have agreed to undertake your presumably time-consuming interview process without even a hint about financial compensation at the end of the tunnel?

If so, it seems extremely likely that you are pre-screening out a huge pool of the most talented and intelligent developers. It takes a special kind of brainwashing to agree to jump through those kinds of hoops for a prize that is kept secret until the end of the process.

It's far from a secret. Lack of discussions means the compensation package isn't negotiated first.

Eh, the experience with interviewing can also pay dividends...

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