[ninjakeyboard]

The wages in toronto have skyrocketed in the last couple years. I'm looking for functional programming people if you're interested I can pay at least $120k/year and offer considerable equity to work on realtime systems. We're profitable and not funded. We have a couple seats to fill and I'm having a hard time because people in Scala circles are expecting $150k/year in Toronto. Many of my peers are making $150k no problem in the city as full time employees at your average tech company.

If you have elixir or scala experience, like FP, like realtime problems...

[motohagiography]

Congrats on having a profitable self funded company, and in Toronto, that is amazing.

As an example situation, I'd like in this pseudononymous situation to ask what are the factors and principles that makes $120k/y a reasonable offer for a functional programmer in Toronto?

A consultant earns about $1k+/day, or double the proposed salary, and companies typically pay $1600-2400/day for contractors through an agency, so I'm trying to figure out what makes that $120k/year viable.

Presumably you pay based on what the work is worth to the company (revenue per employee) and what you can find in the market.

If you are getting price takers at that level, that's the market clearing price, then the market is the market.

But if you aren't getting takers, what is the value can you afford to pay for at $120k, but can also afford to not-have that value if it saves you $30k? Is there a revenue-per-employee threshold, or are you reaching a diminishing marginal return on additional developers - which suggests you are toward the end of your growth curve?

The idea that a company can afford to wait two quarters or longer to hold out for a %20 salary savings by waiting for someone to take it suggests that the marginal value of the work isn't very high.

The definition of a shitty job is pretty much one where your work isn't valued, and when you compare Toronto offers to the rest of the market, they are literally advertising, "we will pay you for work we don't value!" Is there a principle at play here, or is it just a straight "take it or leave it," offer?

The saying, "we can't afford cheap things," is why SFBA startups pay so much - because there is too much multiples growth at stake to miss out of it by saving on small things. Do we just not have the same growth upside?

[ninjakeyboard]

The salary is partly imposed on me as a constraint but we are also offering an unreal equity package vs what I've seen (multiple % in voting shares.) My salary is the same. And it's not low for Toronto. With my experience I know I could make at least another 20k but the equity compensates.

Our team is extremely small so the value of work contributed by each head (given the individual can successfully contribute in such an environment) is very high.

The issue is less finding takers and moreso finding the right takers. I've turned down people who were very interested because I wasn't sure about them. Unfortunately, I have been outbid on hires I was sure about which is very difficult to swallow. I would like to be able to offer at the upper end of the spectrum but the equity does have some value in the picture. I'm sure we could do an either or thing. Like you choose - either more cash or less with more equity. Because not everyone seems to be very interested in ownership. They just want to be paid.

[motohagiography]

That imposed constraint is the thing I keep circling around. Somebody says "this is enough," and all the companies seem to agree, except a rare US company that isn't in the loop.

Toronto is universally anchored to that 120 number, and 200 seems taboo. Whatever your company is doing, that's fantastic you can do it in Toronto, as QoL for people is really good, and it has the kind of culture pretty much everyone wants to live in.

[ibopm]

Is that CAD or USD though? Because you're still really underpaying if it's CAD.

[acchow]

120CAD = 92USD. Ouch.

[apercu]

Unless you are living in the US and getting paid in CAD what does it matter? That's not really a legitimate perspective.

[acchow]

It matters because you don't just spend your earnings locally.

[apercu]

Actually, most people do.

[acchow]

Most people do, but most people wish they didn't. They wish they made more so they could travel the world...

[Liru]

Where are all the Elixir jobs at in Toronto? I can't seem to find any.

[ninjakeyboard]

There are elixir meetups held by pagerduty. PagerDuty is moving primarily to elixir and have a large engineering presence in Toronto. Their interview is a bit tough. I know several good devs who didn't make it through the process. It's usually something like two-sum problem (two lists, does a number from one list sum to equal 0 from the other list?) in a 40 minute live coding exercise over the phone. You can shoot me an email if you want to chat - alayablue -- at -- hotmail.com and I'll reply from my work email address. Let me know if you do send an email - I don't use that account. It's always worth having a chat so please do reach out.

[digianarchist]

wxgames

[acchow]

It sounds like you are fully aware that you should raise compensation. Why don't you?

[TomMarius]

Maybe the "not funded" part?