I could have made more per hour delivering pizza than I did in my first technical job as a fresh grad, but it was fun, it paid my rent, I learned stuff and it put the experience on my CV to get a better job when I got bored of it - and management there well knew that that was my plan, and had no problem at all with that.

There's no employee equity at Shadowcat (the company I co-founded) either. Myself and the other founder hold one share each, which pay no dividends, and which we never intend to sell - they exist to give us the authority to build the company we want to work for for the forseeable future, the way we think it should be built.

There's more than one way to do things; not all of them are wrong.

If these two biz dev guys can make the company successful no matter what the quality of the product, then he's not very valuable. If that's not true, though, then his work has a very direct impact on the value of the company, which generally means that he would have equity. The former case seems unlikely, so it seems like he's getting a raw deal.

Without equity grants, you have to give employees monetary incentives. Those are usually capped and generally don't have much upside. They're also almost impossible to calculate on a single-person basis. Equity has essentially an unlimited upside and its worth is easily measured.

Why don't you give your employees equity?

The company is held only by the founders so we can control its progress and ensure it becomes the company we envisaged.

Our employees believe in that dream. Since there's no monetary value to having equity, they don't care that they don't have any. They do, however, make more than I do.

As for "well give it out anyway, they could always sell it" I refer to the point of "becomes the company we envisaged" and what happened to craigslist.

I never said our model was common. I never said it was wise for the majority of companies, or even viable. But it -does- work for us.

Putting "I worked at a startup you've never heard of" on your resume isn't a good thing, unless you can say you were a founder. He should either be getting paid a lot more than market, or he should have equity, to compensate for this.

Apparently you believe age should have an impact on how much you get paid. Can you elaborate?

Exceptions abound, of course. There are plenty of well-paid morons with decades of experience and lots of young rockstars.

But ask any programmer on the planet whether they got paid more or less 5 years ago (adjusted for inflation) and the majority will say "less".

Well the reality is that it often does. Anyway, it's indicative of experience.

Occasionally. Less so for developers than for other careers.

He's probably nearer year 1.

You "buy" equity with risk and lower/no compensation. What is this guy risking? They are funded, so really the only risk is that the owners lose interest or run out of money (a risk you have working ANY small business-- or any business at all in this economy).

Here's some guidelines on what you can expect if you're getting paid roughly market rates:

http://venturehacks.com/articles/option-pool-shuffle#market

It's like a record label "employing" a solo artist singer for an average wage, and then pocketing all the profits from their music and passing none of it on. It's just a pretty raw deal.

"They're funded" is also mis-leading, as they're still in the process of getting an angel round. The guidelines and the post you've written (which are excellent, by the way) are more for "post series A, pre series B" stage rather "angel round, forming the core team by signing on the first technical person" stage.