Pre-series A. Once Series A comes into play, you can get paid "market" - which is to say, the normal rate outside of FAANG.

"Market" is weird to measure, because you're not really asking what market rate is, you're asking what your baseline is. If you can get a FANG job, the number you care about is effectively the average of what FANG would pay. If you can't, then it's effectively average rate outside of FANG.

AND, arguably, "market rate" in SV is below market rate elsewhere, especially when you factor in cost of living.

So anyone who is good enough to work for a big company you have no interest in?

#2-#9 (roughly) are taking on more financial risk (this corresponds to the startup's market risk).

#50 is probably being hired for very specific skills and experience (to mitigate technical risk) that increases their opportunity cost considerably, and you aren't going to get an engineer with a track record of scaling operations like yours unless they get a decent salary and a shot at a significant upside.

For certain skillsets and track records, when a startup is having severe growing pains, it becomes a sellers' market.

The trick to this is find a company with large upside potential that is either about to IPO or has just recently IPO'd.

The list is small, but there are some obvious choices, even now.

Tangentially, I _really_ lucked out. I had other options that were lead engineer, or engineer #2-4, but this was unequivocally the best choice. The work is more interesting here too.