[thedufer]

> In my experience the salary difference isn't usually that large.

Speaking as someone who recently did a round of interviewing with a mix of established companies and startups, $50k is a _very_ conservative guess. The difference between my Google offer and the highest startup one was ~$100K - if you drop to the average startup offer, it goes up to ~$150k. And that was at ~3.5 years of experience - it gets worse as you become more experienced.

It's hard for me to imagine how sure of a bet a startup would have to be for their equity to be worth $150k/year.

[shon]

Interesting data point. Thanks for sharing. I'm no longer in SF so may be out of touch with current salary gaps.

That said, this is makes sense to me. Google's stock options aren't making employees wealthy these days. Yet it's still a fantastic company and obviously compensates with salary. On the other hand, no startup that I know of can pay 3-400K salaries for 3-4 years exp.

Also it should be said that the type of work you likely do and the culture at a large public company will likely be very different from a small startup. Culture, ability to influence direction, large potential upside (though unlikely) are reasons people continue to pick startups despite lower salaries.

[thedufer]

This is NYC, FWIW. I've never lived in SF.

To be fair, the Google offer does include RSUs. However, since you can immediately sell those I think its fair to treat them like cash.