In the bay area, I'm currently paying 5 people 2k / mo and I've been paying them that much for about a year. They are incredibly hardworking and work about 12 hours / day. I mainly recruit from CalWorks (a public assistance program that provides cash aid and services to eligible families that have a child(ren) in the home), which is the same place that Amazon gets alot of their warehouse staff from.

Every-time I pay them, I feel a sense of guilt/discomfort. 2k / month is really hard to live on in the bay area, especially when you have kids. I want to pay them more, but its all I can afford with my current salary.

By "Work" they are learning and teaching each other JavaScript (Node, React, ReactNative, Vue, Redux, GraphQL) and building out some of my ideas. Hopefully they can find a job as a software engineer soon, it would change their lives permanently for the better!