[artemk]

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?

[sgustard]

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.

[artemk]

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.

[wonnage]

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.

[artemk]

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.

[obstacle1]

>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.

[artemk]

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

[dllthomas]

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

[cunac]

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

[artemk]

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.

[elbear]

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.

[cunac]

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)

[artemk]

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?

[cunac]

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