We're not animals
so the engineers went to greener pastures
She.
(I'm assuming you did your research and the CTO is in fact female, but it's better to teach people to use a gender neutral term when they don't know the gender of the person in question, and it is irrelevant to the discussion like it is here)
It has been accepted for decades by the scientific community, and the general population at large, that humans are, in fact, animals. But language takes time to react to changes changes. And that’s why “we are not animals” is still being used, even though the meaning today is “we should not be treated like we treat other animals”.
Hopefully all of this is clear.
But when you're talking about a whole team, it's a little different. Original employer A went to a lot of expensive effort to find a very particular set of qualified engineers that could work together at the same time -- where the sum is much more than the parts.
If employer B hires the team already put together perfectly qualified for a similar task roughly all at once... they're not just taking advantage of employees' freedom (which is fine) but literally essentially "stealing" the massive work employer A did to assemble the team piece by piece.
I'm not saying it should be illegal, because I don't see how you'd write any effective law against it. But when you take a whole team at once, I think the word "poaching" is apt.
The "land use rights" part. The analogy works because on some level the company is "your land."
In that scenario, in order to entice them you might offer bonuses and salary that are disproportionate to the value those employees would contribute to your company, but the loss of those employees would cripple the competitor (loss of institutional knowledge, schedule delays and cost of finding replacements, morale, etc).
The company can counter-offer but that costs them money they wouldn't otherwise have to spend, to protect their "investment" -- the sum of the parts as you mentioned. Ideally a company would be resilient against the loss of employees (e.g. getting hit by a bus) but smaller companies like startups don't often have that luxury, which makes them more vulnerable to poaching and other shenanigans instigated by large companies.
- flexible schedules
- autonomy + impact
- interesting work
- culture (respect, appreciation... etc)
It's not hard for me to imagine an environment where I'd love to work despite giving up a lot of salary. Hell, I'm not unique—just look at how many incredibly skilled people choose research careers over far more lucrative industry jobs.
And yet, I don't see many startups that seem serious about this. If you want to compete for great engineers, choose some of the things I outlined, actually commit to maintaining them and figure out how to demonstrate this (show, not just tell).
It could be something as simple as a 4 day workweek. Or even 4x 10 hour days. Instead startups are a place where people are expected to put in 60 hour weeks!
If my salary is $200k, it's clear what that means, and I can be pretty confident that there won't be weird social games to get me to actually accept less this pay period. (There's an argument that income tax is an example of this, but that doesn't vary in unpredictable ways between positions.)
Well, it first seemed low to me as well.
But 0.01% of one million is ten thousand, which doesn't sound that bad. One million also seems low for a successful company. The same offer would give you ten billion at apple.
Disclaimer: I am not good at math and I don't understand stocks, equity etc. So maybe I am completely wrong.
1,000,000 USD * (0.01 / 100) = 100 USD, not 10,000 USD. The company would have to be worth 100M USD for 0.01% to be worth 10,000 USD.
> Disclaimer: I am not good at math [...]
Indeed ;-) But don't worry, many a great engineer has made worse mistakes when it comes to shifting the decimal point.
Fortunately my job does not require math skills, so at least I am no danger to society :D
Yet most engineers were hired with the goal of making it "scalable" when most of the work was frontend anyway.
Feel free to do that if you think it is the right thing to do.
In fact, there are probably only two things that startups can offer that big companies cannot:
(1) A product that when successful it will change everything, think Google/Facebook/SpaceX material. This is good because it puts employees in a position to "change the word," while also potentially getting paid in the long run.
(2) Flexibility and room for the mind to work. No useless meeting, no endless discussions to cover one's ass, no set hours or obscure HR policies. Just hard work and a ridiculously challenging mission.
Outside of that, why would you work at a startup?
I can't imagine why you'd ever feel bad for a company that fails to retain its staff. Employees finding better jobs in other companies is one of the best market outcomes you could want.