You're overestimating their final salary. Per-employee expenses are usually almost the salary all over again. Payroll taxes are a real bitch. It's probably closer to $110-$120k salary per employee.
"Payroll tax" (more appropriately known as the employer-side of the FICA tax) is only 7%, it's really not what I would qualify as "a bitch". My wages are 80% of my total compensation (my employer provides a nice breakdown of insurance costs, 401(k) match, etc), factor in 7% of my wages going to FICA and their total cost to employ me with my total compensation package is ~125% of my annual salary.
I also make a fairly lower wage than the industry average since I'm not in SV, insurance rates don't increase proportionately with salary so if this is what I'm seeing at $75K/yr then at $200K/yr gross these employees are most certainly seeing at least $150K/yr in their salaries.
Ah, yes, forgot about UI and workers comp, so let's make that ~130% (assuming an employer doesn't have egregious numbers of unemployment claims which cause their UI to skyrocket).
Re:What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt
by EvanAnderson on Tuesday September 20, 2016 @08:02PM
(#12544402)
In my market (Ohio, US) loaded cost of an employee is between 130% and 135% of salary.
Re:What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt
by mattmaroon on Tuesday September 20, 2016 @07:23PM
(#12544207)
No. I've employed people in California. You don't pay 70% extra. It's more like the 25-30 range.
Re:What It Costs to Run Let's Encrypt
by wallace_f on Tuesday September 20, 2016 @10:11PM
(#12544927)
The human cognitive measure for egregious pay is not: Pay > Marginal Utility to Humanity, otherwise there's millions of jobs that provide Pay > MuH or even where Pay > 0 > MuH, and I don't hear people complaining about that fact very often. If you look at it through this assumption that compensation should be provided in exchange for providing a benefit to the world, complaining about LetsEncrypt dev salaries begins to look ridiculous.
Also it's a budget, so I suspect it's intentionally padded to a small degree.
While prices haven't converged on SV everywhere, it does have a ripple effect.