[doctorless]

Hands down, the number one problem in hiring and retaining senior engineers is being able to match the compensation level. FAANG-type companies have a huge difference to practically everyone else. Startups, especially, can’t match the salary, and few make up for it in equity comparable to the risk level engineers take on by accepting the job. Senior engineers typically know better, and so you end up with mid or even junior applicants for senior roles, and out of desperation, they end up being the pick.

[cloogshicer]

I disagree a bit here. Of course, salary is very important, but I (and many people I know) would easily choose (and have chosen) a lower salary for any combination of these perks:

- Work fewer hours

- Work from anywhere

- Work in a specific location

- Work in a certain environment

- Work in a specific kind of organization

- Work with specific technologies

- etc.

People are very different and have very different wishes and needs. Salary isn't always priority #1.

[xenadu02]

The problem isn't lower salary, it's the paltry options most startups offer these days.

The YC startup I worked for got acquired recently. I was employee #38. I've still made more in RSUs working at a big tech company than I would have made had I stayed the full four years and vested all my options. In fact I got a bigger RSU award this year than what I got from my stock in the acquisition.

Startups would be well-advised to hire fewer people, get rid of under-performers quickly, and reserve an extra slice in the cap table for really high performers. If someone comes along that creates entire new features on their own initiative (features still featured prominently in your marketing) then may I suggest you continue to award that person either their initial grant or half (depending on how much it was) on a yearly basis? Even if that means you skip an extra hire that year you'll still come out ahead, both by keeping your high performer happy and by saving the extra salary.

(I want to be clear: The founders were well within their rights to deny my requests for more options and I hold no ill will toward them. It was their business, not mine, and they were free to run it however they wanted.)

[albertgoeswoof]

But you don’t get any of those with a startup. They want you there onsite working long hours doing one specific thing

[souprock]

You can get those with a startup. I sort of did, for some definition of "certain environment" and "specific technologies" and so on. I still do actually, post-startup.

Notably, I got what most software developers would describe as "fewer hours". We tracked time and got paid for actual hours worked. (still do) Since the company would be paying more, we were/are seldom asked to work beyond 40 hours per week. Much of this comes naturally with government contracting. You must track time, and you must pay employees for their time.

Being onsite is a positive. I'm never expected to work at home. Work is work, and go home I can focus on my family or hobbies or sleep.

[humanrebar]

And even if they did make those promises and honored them, you're taking a risk that they won't. And it's not like you get the FAANG salary back if they can't follow through on working hours, the tech stack, or whatever other consideration is important.

[woolvalley]

Work from anywhere is a fairly powerful lever. You can reduce taxes and cost of living extensively and still be able to save the same amount of money in the bank and have the same amount discretionary income. I estimate something from a %30-%40 'discount'.

[schreiaj]

I work at a startup - I work from home, very reasonable hours, doing a range of things. So uh. What?

[Aeolun]

The only thing I would disagree with is that they want you to do all the things.

[cloogshicer]

From my experience, it depends entirely on the startup. There are enough success stories now from startups that treat their employees very well and came out on top.

[gnulinux]

I find this "salary first" a little bullshit too. For the most part it's true, but it's not strictly true. If Amazon offers me $180k but I need to work like a slave, but a startup offers $150k but is very chill, I'm gonna choose the startup.

[Game_Ender]

What if Google or Facebook offer you $300k no risk, with a relatively standard work life balance. Then you have to really carefully weigh the startup equity package and how much you enjoy the respective work environments.

[vonmoltke]

> What if Google or Facebook offer you $300k no risk, with a relatively standard work life balance.

If. People here sometimes make it seem like a senior engineer can just walk into a FAANG, chat with the receptionist, and walk out with a $300k offer. While it is certainly not the hardest thing in the world, these companies are still pretty selective and only employ about 10% of the total seniors in the market. More likely than not you are not getting that kind of offer. This isn't even taking into account downleveling, which Google in particular is notorious for.

[fizwhiz]

Who cares if you're downleveled? The compensation bands are wide enough that they overlap. This usually means that even though you expected level N, you can get your target comp at level N-1 if you negotiate.

[vonmoltke]

That was not my experience. Google was pretty inflexible and offered me (with 16 years of experience) well under $300k for an L4 position.

A month later Twitter offered me 35% more than Google's best and final offer for a more senior position. I didn't even have to negotiate or mention the rejected Google offer.

Oh, I should add that, in my case, the downlevelling was up front. The recruiter wouldn't even put me in for an L5 interview.

[fizwhiz]

I don't know the details of your experience (were all 16yrs of experience as a SWE demonstrating a deep technical expertise?), but Google puts engineers with even 2-3years of experience on an L4-interview loop.

If you knew that you were being slotted for L4 upfront why did you even bother interviewing? I've seen L4s rack up multiple job offers from different companies and use that as leverage to negotiate; they've all been offered $300k+ or more. Not all experience/education is the same but you gotta know how to play the game.

[humanrebar]

Downleveling? I can guess what that means but some clarity would be appreciated. With sources if possible.

[Matthias247]

It means: You interview at Level X, but they give you later on offer for Level X-1. As a reason, they will claim you haven't scored good enough in the interview loop - which might be true, but also might have been the result of bad questions or an incompetent interviewer.

Sources: I know people in person who got these kinds of offers.

[woolvalley]

Your a sr (eng III) and they give you a eng II offer. Internal promotions at google are way too much work relative to the rest of the market.

[cloogshicer]

"Standard" work life balance is relative though. I know lots of people who don't want to work full time. This is especially true for people with family/kids (who incidentally are usually older/more experienced).

[dilyevsky]

Google began allowing part time for sr engineers a few years ago. Dunno if they kept the program.

[subwindow]

I have, and instead took the job for almost half that at a startup. It's not that tough of a decision if you properly weigh the quality of your time.

Keep in mind that you spend roughly half of your waking hours at work. It's important to do what you love during that time. I'm personally not a fan of spending my life to make tiny increases in some ad placement algorithm.

[WalterSear]

150k is reasonable, for a startup, but the majority are offering less. However, 180k is well, well below amazon.

And the stock grants won't begin to compare.

[freyir]

>And the stock grants won't begin to compare.

If you're counting stock separately, $180k salary isn't well, well below Amazon. That's the max they pay, and only in Seattle and the Bay Area.

[scarface74]

There are other places in the US that are hiring senior developers outside of Silicon Valley and the FAANG companies. There are major metropolitan areas in the US where you can start a company, get good senior engineers and not have to pay the wages that FAANG companies pay.

[draw_down]

Well, feel free to name names then if that’s the case.

[scarface74]

You really think that the only place software engineers work in the entire US is Silicon Valley?

All of these cities have a better salary/cost of living trade off than SV.

https://www.matrixres.com/salary-surveys

[burlesona]

You may not be realizing that half or more of the compensation at the big SV tech companies is not salary.

Total compensation of $300k or more is pretty standard for the public companies. Check levels.fyi to see examples.

The benefits are also much better than I’ve seen elsewhere.

I moved to SF from Raleigh because even after cost of living I earn significantly more (ie. put a lot more in savings every year)

Housing here is definitely not as nice as other parts of the country, but if you work hard for a few years here you can leave and pay cash for a nice house in most of the rest of the country.

That’s why engineers keep putting up with the drawbacks and moving here.

[scarface74]

And that’s only true at four or five companiess at the most....

Especially if you’re married, I know a lot of developers whose spouses income goes straight into savings, investments, etc. but it’s another example of HN Silicon valley thinking that software engineering starts and stops at four companies. Married dual income couples especially can make out like bandits in any of those cities.

I live in one of those cities and depending on how you classify me,I’m either somewhere above the median or well over the 75% percentile. Our nice big, new (comparatively) cheap house in the burbs is less than 20% of our take home pay. How much do you think we put aside in savings?

Because assortive mating is a thing - it’s statistically likely that two college educated people will end up getting married and I’m trying to keep this as generic as possible. If one was a software developer making $135K a year in one of those cities and the other was almost any college educated professional making $65K a year. The net of the lower paying spouse could pay off your nice house in the burbs in ten years or less.

I don’t know of any couple who is in that situation (and I know a few) who would think about moving to the west coast just for one spouse to make $300K when their combined income is already above $200K in a much less expensive area.

[burlesona]

I get your point, but I think you’re overgeneralizing.

(1) the salary / equity combination I’m talking about is not just FAANG, it’s basically every large SF tech company. I don’t work for a FAANG but the deal is almost as good.

(2) I specifically moved with my wife and kids to SF to make it easier for my wife to stop working — she wanted to focus on the kids for a few years. One income here was worth more than double what I could earn in Raleigh and this is the first job I had in my career that offered comprehensive medical for the whole family, not just me.

We live in about the same amount of space as we had in Raleigh, it just costs more.

Lastly, while I would prefer to have a little more space for a less absurd mortgage, I’m not interested in living in any suburb. So when you compare housing in the central city of Raleigh (or Austin) versus SF, the comparison is less unfavorable.

So, sure, if I was willing to live in the suburbs I could have more house. But I’d rather deal with less space than is ideal than have to live in the burbs. No judgment intended, it’s just not the lifestyle I want, in the same way it sounds like city life isn’t the lifestyle you want.

[thedufer]

I think the thing here is that cities are a better deal if you can command a top salary, and worse in most other situations. For example, talking about FANG, a senior position at Google (the lowest terminal level) comes with an average salary of $360k. Whereas someone who can get a senior position at Google is looking at your $135k (I get the feeling you're quite senior) or maybe a bit more in lower CoL areas. Even adding in a significant other that doesn't see a bump moving to the Bay, you're likely looking at 2x in the high CoL case.

On the other hand, if you can't get one of those top positions in the Bay you're probably looking at closer to $150k-$200k in a senior position, which makes a $100k or so low CoL position look awfully nice.

This gap widens as you go up the salary scale. I don't think I've ever seen even $300k in a low CoL area, whereas in the expensive areas 7 figures is possible (although quite rare).

[burfog]

The difference being that the FAANG-type companies don't pay well enough to make up for the cost of living. Senior engineers seldom want to live in tiny apartments.

See if you can prove me wrong: find a 10-acre lot within a half hour commute, with a large single-family home, that is affordable to a senior engineer. Alternately, make it 1 acre, but within a 5-minute commute.

[burlesona]

I understand what you’re saying but I think you’re underestimating how many people like city life.

I work in SF and most of the people here are here specifically because they DONT want to live on ten acres in some rural place, they love that the city is walkable and dense and interesting.

For most folks the issue of living in condos or apartments it’s an issue at all until they reach a certain family size. At that point, most of the people in the city would be thrilled to live in a 3-4 bedroom townhome in the city — but THAT is where SF gets really difficult, because those cost $4 million or more these days.

Actually for many people they feel trapped because they’d like a LITTLE more space, ie. the Victorian townhome, but they specifically DO NOT want a car or a yard and do not want to leave the historic, walkable city. At that point you’re really screwed because outside of SF there is basically nothing else walkable west of the Mississippi. So there’s nowhere to go.

If somehow magically you could build a 1900s Victorian townhome city about 30’ away by train I think you’d find a couple million urban Californians wanted to move there.

But of course the sprawl all around the job centers, and the regulatory environment, both make that impossible.

Oh well.

[xapata]

> Actually for many people they feel trapped because they’d like a LITTLE more space, ie. the Victorian townhome, but they specifically DO NOT want a car or a yard and do not want to leave the historic, walkable city. At that point you’re really screwed because outside of SF there is basically nothing else walkable west of the Mississippi. So there’s nowhere to go.

There are a few other big cities on the west coast, and many of them have towns or small cities nearby that have walkable centers.

[curuinor]

LA is world-famous for being non-walkable (even as it simultaneously is getting much better for walkability, hilariously). Seattle just isn't walkable compared to SF.

[xapata]

Surrounding towns of LA, like Pasadena, have nice walkable inner cores, though maybe you'll have to bike commute to work. Also, I found the LA transit system remarkably pleasant and useful, despite its reputation.

Seattle is walkable enough for me. It's not a binary variable.

[pmiller2]

I would love to buy something... anything better than a fixer upper, within a few minutes of a BART station that would allow me no more than a 60 minute commute into SF, but that doesn’t look realistic on less than a $400K household income. Owning pretty much anything would beat apartment living, even if it is in a rent-controlled $2200, 800 sq ft 2BR (my current situation).

[masonic]

  outside of SF there is basically nothing else walkable west of the Mississippi

What a sad perception.

[crazygringo]

So where is it?

Where can you live outside of SF that you don't need a car and can live a normal adult lifestyle?

[masonic]

First of all, SF doesn't really qualify. How many live in a neighborhood where their workplace, medical, grocery, and social needs are all walkable to/from?

Car-ownership-hostile != "walkable". Using Lyft/Uber isn't "walking".

Anyway, as to your question: parts of Sacramento, Auburn, Carson City, Eugene, Bend, and Boise all qualify, and that'slimiting to cities I know firsthand. Other cities that I hear this from others include Salem, SLC, ...

Much depends on what you consider to be "normal adult lifestyle". If one's definition of that includes walking through waste and needles to the Folsom St. Fair, SF probably does have a monopoly there.

[burlesona]

I think your bar for walkable is lower than mine. Yes there are other places where you can take a nice walk, but I’m talking about living without caring or noticing that you haven’t driven a car in weeks.

Things that I do within two blocks of the flat I live in:

- get groceries

- go to a bakery

- go to one of three coffee shops

- go to one of ten or so restaurants

- go to a comic book store

- go to a game store

- go to a pub

- get my hair cut

- go to the dentist

My two kids, both under school age, at this point can safely walk with me to any of these activities, and, except for the dentist, they often do and quite enjoy it.

I could walk a bit further, but usually bike, and occasionally take transit, to my office, and to literally everything else in my life except the following:

- Trips out of town

- An occasional visit to a Lowes on the other side of town

That’s the bar I’m aiming for.

Note 1, I’m not talking about Manhattan. There’s almost nothing over three stories for several dozen blocks around me, this is all just really ordinary small/medium scale stuff from circa 1900.

And note 2, you asked how many people “really live like that,” and as best I can tell in San Francisco the answer is somewhere between 50 and 90% of the ~million residents. (I don’t know how good every neighborhood is, and I think some are less convenient than mine, but mine is pretty ordinary for SF.)

[joshuamorton]

SF has decent public transit. Disliking public transit is fine, but ignoring it is something else entirely. Muni and Bart do make it possible to get around most of SF without walking or using uber/lyft.

And, given where I live, my medical, grocery, and a significant chunk of my social needs are truly within walking distance. The only one that isn't is work, and that would be accessible via public transit if I was willing to compromise on commute times a bit (or if I changed employers/offices).

Carson City has 4 bus routes serving 150 square miles, San Francisco has close to 100 serving less than 50. Those aren't remotely comparable.

[zachrose]

Most of the Pacific Northwest (save for some suburbs) is walkable if you’re willing to gear up for 9 months of rain every year.

[humanrebar]

Plenty if you can cycle and get paid over $300k. If you had to, you could buy several walkable-to-work lots and join them into one big one in some cities. Or Uber literally everywhere.

[EpicEng]

So buy a bunch of property so you can walk a straight line or... don't walk. This is one of the most ridiculous things I've ever read here.

[burlesona]

Well, go ahead and list your examples, then.

There’s a big difference between places where you can walk (technically that’s almost anywhere) and a city that was built for walking (ie was large before cars).

On the east coast these are much more common, for obvious reasons. Places like Charleston and Savannah have a very similar feel to San Francisco. Some of New Orleans. Most of the center cities in the northeast. A lot of Chicago.

But the common thread here is age of the city and how well it has held on to its historic core. Out west there’s just not much old enough to qualify. Sure, there are some nice small towns here and there with historic main street areas. Portland, Seattle, and Boise have a neighborhood or two. But just ask the question “would you live here without a car?,” and then look at what percentage of the population does. Outside of those aforementioned bits of the country, not owning a car would make life extraordinarily difficult.

[xapata]

> not owning a car would make life extraordinarily difficult.

I find that if you live within a couple blocks from a nice grocery store, life without a car can be quite pleasant.

[twblalock]

> See if you can prove me wrong: find a 10-acre lot within a half hour commute, with a large single-family home, that is affordable to a senior engineer. Alternately, make it 1 acre, but within a 5-minute commute.

That seems excessive. You certainly don't need to live on a multi-acre lot to have a good life.

I work at a FAANG and most of my colleagues own single-family homes and have no problem paying their mortgages. Of course they aren't on 10-acre lots -- we aren't in the middle of nowhere, we are in a city.

[masonic]

A 10-acre lot is a ludicrous metric, and even 1 acre (for a residence) metric is unrealistic. I doubt most technical types even want the burden of upkeep for an acre+. At that point, the main thing you're buying is isolation.

[BeetleB]

Reading this thread, I find both sides at extremes - one side from the Valley who's quite out of touch with the rest of the country. And the other side that is putting a fairly high metric.

1 acre is not at all unrealistic. I work at a well known tech company and live in an area where you can afford acre (and multiacre) lots. While owning a 1 acre lot with house is certainly not the norm in the company, it is also not at all noteworthy. No one gets surprised when they hear someone owns one. It's seen very much as a preference thing. Some people like apartments, some townhouses, some houses, and some larger lots.

And yes, they're mostly "tech types".

More realistically, in most parts of the country, a tech job will get you a 2000+ sq ft house built no earlier than the 90's. And in many of those places, a short commute to boot. Now I know SV folks often talk about how they don't need a house that big or one that "new"[0], the reality is once you're outside and can afford one, you won't find a good reason to buy a 1960's house, or a 1200 sq ft one. The preferences of SV folks are really post hoc rationalizations.

[0] Many of my coworkers reject houses built in the 90's - it's too old for them.

[Aeolun]

I think OP might have a wrong idea of what an acre is. That’s really the only way I can imagine the comment making sense.

[souprock]

It makes perfect sense as is. It is almost my experience.

A coworker of mine bought 11 acres. (That's one more than 10. These lots go to 11...) He has sheep and goats and chickens, and he can shoot his AR-15 in his yard. Interestingly, he grew up in San Francisco. His current lifestyle is ridiculously incompatible with his city of origin.

I settled for a little 0.4 acre lot with a modest 3500 square foot house. (1619 square meter lot, 325 square meter house) By settling for that, I got to live within a mile of the beach and within a mile of work, and I paid off the mortgage in 8 years without trying terribly hard.

So that's close. I suspect you'd normally have to commute about 15 or 20 minutes to get a whole acre, and they go for $220,000 to $500,000. There is a house on 1.3 acre (like a football field) selling for $320,000 that is 11 minutes away, but the house was built in 1957. If you don't mind paying a couple million, you can be 5 minutes away with a modern waterfront home on an acre or two.

So this is non-urban life. It's mostly not even rural; we have an airport with about 7 passenger jet flights arriving per day. Senior developers live in nice houses, paid-off unless they really go nuts. They can have waterfront access, or room for a horse, or room to shoot and raise sheep. They can get McMansions. They can live within walking distance of work.

I just can't see giving that up. Sure, cable cars are cool and all, but that doesn't compensate for what I'd have to give up.

[Aeolun]

Meanwhile, here in Tokyo, a 100sqm lot goes for $700.000, an hour away from work.

I can’t help but be a bit jealous, but it was really interesting to hear how different things can be.

[burfog]

Aren't things cheap if you go well to the west, almost to the coast and away from a rail station? Japan has rural areas. If people would live there, they could afford to have large families.

[joshuamorton]

Most people anywhere don't live on 10 acre lots (nor do they want to, I certainly don't!).

But yes, a senior engineer can likely afford a large single family home relatively close to work (many of my co-workers do).

[rockinghigh]

Living on a 10-acre lot sounds like a nightmare.

[sethammons]

Why? I'm on 10 acres. I like it for the isolation. Just got it, so maintaining and improvements are going to be interesting and a big learning opportunity.

[paulcole]

Some people hate maintenance and isolation as much as you like it.

[sethammons]

Sure. I guess I should have been more explicit in my reply: I felt the above comment was lacking in content; why would they not want 10 acres.

[subwindow]

Why would you _want_ 10 acres? What are you going to do with all of that space?

I like walking to the grocery store (or bar, or restaurants, etc). I like biking to work. I live within walking distance of literally 6 parks, so it's not like I'm starved for green or open space.

I don't understand your point of view to the exact same degree that you don't understand mine.

[paulcole]

Here’s my answer: I have no interest in living so far away from a major urban center that I could have 10 acres. I have no interest in doing anything with land, farming, maintenance, whatever.

My life is very simple and I’ve never lived in an apartment bigger than 600 square feet. The idea of 10 acres is insane to me.

[landryraccoon]

> Alternately, make it 1 acre, but within a 5-minute commute.

Wait what? What city are you talking about that has a tech hub or commercial center within a 5 minute commute of 1 acre homes?

[burlesona]

Forget about a tech hub, what city with jobs at all. Ten acres is more like a small farm than a house, by definition at that lot size almost nothing can be within five minutes, lol.

[souprock]

My area almost qualifies. Right now there is a home on 1.16 acres going for $275,000 that is 7 minutes away from my employer and 10 minutes away from a rather large employer.

We have sort of a specialist tech hub here, featuring stuff like radar and cyberwar. Lots of these companies are hiring. (mine: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18819736)

You can get more than ten acres if you are willing to commute a bit. I think 2.5 acres is the minimum lot size if you go south about 14 minutes from one of my workplace's buildings, or 22 minutes from the one I'm in.

It is a small farm. Senior engineers can afford to live on hobby farms. Some of them expect to do so. It's not just here either; I've known people who did that in relatively rural parts of Massachusetts and Virginia too.

I recall somebody on HackerNews proposing an interesting explanation for how people react. The available jobs get dismissed because you'd have to seriously consider moving (which is annoying) if you admitted that employment in these locations is viable.

[gregw134]

A football field is 1.3 acres, so a 1 acre lot is going to be expensive anywhere.

[randallsquared]

Uh, no. A quick perusal of real estate listings in towns all over flyover country will disabuse you of that notion. It's a little harder to find a house on an acre of land with 1Gib fiber, but if you're willing to settle for mere cable speeds, it's very, very easy.

[haditab]

Your somehow assuming cost of living is only high around FAANG. Bay area is full of non-FAANG companies that pay significantly less. Faang doesn't struggle to hire senior because they're the only places that affords to pay enough.

[philliphaydon]

10 acre is a lot of land. 435600 square feet intact. When I lived in NZ our home was on 9000 square feet. And that was a lot of space... I would think a fairer example is living in a landed home instead of an apartment. I’ve spent the last 11 years in apartments and just had a baby, now wanting to move back to NZ to have a landed home and back yard...

[dlp211]

Stop looking at only the bay area. Google has offices in Pittsburgh, Kirkland, Austin, and Boulder. If you are willing to work at one of those locations, you can get pretty close to getting everything you want.

[esoterica]

If you want a 10 acre lot then your lifestyle is simply incompatible with city living. It has nothing to do with money or cost of living; even the billionaires in San Francisco don't have 10 acre lots.