[TulliusCicero]

Nah, if they stormed out right after you told them the salary, it's pretty obvious.

It sounds more like an example of 'cultural density' -- not wanting to realize or acknowledge something that's at odds with what your local culture desires (in this case, the desire to pay as little as possible).

[withinboredom]

This was the highest paid position in the company (30k a year) and a salary (which only their managers were paid in a salary). They thought they were offering a really good salary, not realizing it was FAR below market rate. They still hired engineers at below market rate (~60k) but I helped them find some really smart junior engineers who could maintain the existing code; and warned them that these engineers would likely leave in the next year or two, max.

They were able to become fairly profitable with full-time engineers, eventually, and ended up paying above market rate, last I heard.

[chongli]

What? Was everyone else at the company living in their car and relying on the food bank to feed themselves? Or was this in some strange ultra-low-CoL environment?

[withinboredom]

It was long ago, maybe 2009ish? Developer salaries were actually going down, IIRC, during this time. Likely due to companies exactly like this one and pivoting to more digital solutions. 100+k was very rare outside of SV. Adjusted for inflation, 30k is roughly equal to about 40-50k in todays dollars.