- I've regained perspective on the value of hard-earned money and the plight of the working man AKA majority of America.
- I have no sympathy for complaints that you can't find FAANG salaries anymore. Zero.
[0] I live in Seattle in a studio apartment, so I'm all right.
This is merely an entitled rant made by a surplus elite that has finally realized they're not very elite if conditions aren't absolutely perfectly in their favor. The real elite look inward and improve themselves. Only the pathetic, mediocre, and unimpressive point their fingers outward.
99% of the US population has it 10x harder and still manages to raise good kids. I can see why most people have nothing but contempt for tech workers.
I don't know. If you're not hiring them full time, it might be a bargain, and save you a bunch of money. Particularly if you're trying to architect services from the ground up.
Some people are "force multipliers". In that the work they do can save 10x the engineering time. Dennis Ritchie was maybe a 1B force multiplier.
I was paid $100k/year about a decade ago and saved the company I worked for $4M.
In short, you don't know what you don't know. How much is it worth for you to find out?
Are you looking to hire robots or something?
If I have an issue and I'm paying a high paid consultant to solve it, well he needs to solve it, right? Particularly if he's not writing code.
A $450/hr consultant better be able to save $4500/hr. A $1000/hr consultant better be able to save $10k/hr.
Before spending money I must identify a specific need. I can give a very specific need for code (features, launch dates, customer requests) but frankly do not have a need for technical advice by itself.
Then it sounds like you made the correct decision.
Disclaimer: I run a consulting firm with fractional CTO services for startups and previously founded a startup.
Avoid recruitment channels (like HN!) where FAANG people and FAANG-apirants congregate.
> with lots of FAANG experience
Use FAANG experience as an exclusion filter, not an inclusion filter.
First, as you said, you can't afford the compensation that they're used to.
Second, FAANG companies can absorb tons of bad talent in their hiring process and have mechanisms to both push that talent back out and table it internally once it's known for what it is. There are many awful FAANG engineers. Some of the top performers in the world work for FAANG companies and they're often better at recruiting those people than almost anyone else, but FAANG experience does not identify someone as one of those top performers. It's a really misleading and noisy signal on resumes.
Third, even among talented people who shined in their roles at FAANG, they did so in a radically different work environment than you'll be offering them. The way they spend their days, the pace of deliverables they're calibrated to deliver, the amount of support/independence they need, etc are nothing like what suits your organization. Some may do well (or better) in your startup, but many are not going to be suited to it at all and (if hired into FAANG early) may not even have had the experience to know for themselves.
TLDR; you are not a FAANG company and looking anywhere near FAANG-associated candidates is your problem.
Managers on average are worse than the average coder. And FAANG managers are no exception. At some level it becomes more about winning intra-company fights, than moving the company forward.
You gotta look at the applicant as a whole person: personality, skills, ability to push the needle forward, etc.
Patients can die if he messes up. The worst thing when I mess up is the product is a few days late.
I have been coding for 25 years, make half of what he does and he deserves every penny of the difference.
One time, I saw someone cook raw chicken at a restaurant. A $10 an hour worker can cause people to die if they mess up.
Don't let the Physician cartel make you think they have some magical powers because they have the AMA and ACGME working to limit the supply of Physicians.
The fact that you are treated by 1 Physician instead of a team of Physician is something Physicians greedily imposed on us.
Isn't cooking just what you're supposed to do with raw chicken?
I wrote code for the emergency broadcast system, as well as telecom code. Plenty of people could die if that code messed up.
Being a doctor has grueling training, but I think it's a very different skillset from a senior engineer at FAANG. The type of problem solving that is required for the latter is not really comparable. Remember, there's not even a cartel to keep comp artificially high. It's just that expensive if a senior (or higher) engineer fucks up at FAANG that spending an extra 100k to get the top 2% of talent vs the top 5% of talent is worth it to them.
Investors these days want a return on investment in 18-24 months, not 5 years.
Your first lover is never your wife.
The way to go IMO, is to hire someone who’s experience has been startup-focused and offer generous equity to compensate for the fact you can’t pay market rate.
I don’t understand this.
Yes, for some engineers, in some roles, in some locations it makes sense - but that’s a tiny part of the overall market.
I’m 40, live in a rural area in a Southern US state, and have right at twenty years’ experience. I’ve worked a big companies, have been the first tech hire at a startup, and have specialized somewhat in healthtech. I feel like I’m the best I’ve ever been; I have room to grow but I know exactly where that room is and how to make it happen. I’ve done everything from knocking out new tickets every day from a queue to architecting large distributed systems. I love my current job that consists mostly of two things: figuring out what the product side of the org actually wants/needs and making sure it gets done, and supporting all of the other engineers with internal tooling and support.
I make $170k base.
There is equity to consider there as well, but equity in an early-stage startup that doesn’t yet have a firm exit strategy. That’s not compensation - that’s a lottery ticket.
You can get junior engineers in my area for $60-70k, and mid-career around $120k.
I’m at the point where I believe I could _justify_ a salary of $400k… just not in my current role. Not in any engineering role that consists primarily of actual engineering work. That’s the kind of money I’d expect if I were looking at an engineering director or CTO position. I’m very comfortable at my current rate; moving “up” into those roles would require significantly more of my time and energy. My kids are teenagers, and I want to be able not only to spend time with them, but to actually leave work at work sometimes and focus on supporting them. I don’t plan to target those roles for another ~7-10 years.
Worked for 23 years now in professional development. Started in big companies, then moved to smaller companies/startups.
I'm very very good at what I do and my salary is up to the point where small companies are starting to choke on it a bit, and I'm just a tiny bit higher than yours.
Been a senior, team lead, principal, architect, dabbled in some management. Also with successful product launches under my belt.
If I want to move up in salary - it probably won't be in startup land unless I find a relatively big one and I'm CTO.
More likely that I'm just going to start my own companies even if I have to do everything myself.
It feels like jobs, while somewhat available, just aren't what I'm looking for anymore. And the market is turning, or has turned, unfriendly to the super senior.
From my experience the 400k base is very very niche. Plenty of top end engineering talent out there available for less.
and you're right. i know numerous talented engineers in the south who you can pay less and get as good or better of a job done than a FAANG engineer. tbh i might be biased towards a non-FAANG engineer. them southern devs be scrappy.
I've tried to build a local network, but haven't had much success yet.
I've had a similar problem in Rhode Island.
It seems like meaningful meetups are just hard when you don't live near a large community of software developers with similar interests.
I imagine remote work exacerbates this. I.e., more of us live away from those population centers.
I try not to think about it in terms of total compensation, but of marginal income (net income - cost of living).
My taxes here are lower, and my cost of living is much lower. I own a 5-bedroom home on half an acre that I paid $125k for. My mortgage is $850 / month. My entire monthly expenditures, including food and such, are around $3,500.
That doesn't surprise me, but it doesn't change my point. Your math is just slightly different.
I'm not super familiar with NOLA housing prices and such, but I can't imagine that it's on par with SF or LA. That means you can work for a lower base comp and still have the same amount (or more!) left over after meeting your basic needs.
I can't speak for your particular situation.
As someone laid off about a year ago, the answer for myself is supply and demand. I had been holding out for my previous TC, but now I'm pursuing lower-paying positions.
It's disappointing, but I don't take offense at it.
Once you make $200k base and $200k+ in equity, you consider yourself worth $400k+. Even if the equity portion isn't really being paid by your company, it's being paid by the shareholders, it's still money in the bank.
This drastically closes the amount of positions you're willing to consider, as many companies either don't pay in equity at all, or aren't growth companies whose initial offer of equity will double or triple.
And you're lecturing us that it's preposterous.
I guess you don't understand what things cost and the needs of real people who aren't billionaires.
compromise: you'd be able to hire some of the top engineers in the world that live in Europe at half that salary
or accept your business isn't viable and fold
For 125k in almost any other country on the continent you'd be extremely competitive, if not beating, any local offer.
If you're still looking for someone, I'd be happy to chat with you. I'm an ex-Facebook engineer, but I'd be willing to consider a part time thing if it covers my living expenses.
I've got my own startup idea I'd like to execute on, but I'm not willing/crazy enough to eat through my savings for X years.
It's worth giving serious consideration to whether the expensive 500k a year dev will outproduce five 100k, or ten 50k developers. There are serious non-linear scaling properties to increasing the headcount of engineering teams.
The traditional answer to this problem is equity, but note that engineers have noticed that illiquid equity is a different thing to salary.
400K+ in SALARY is rarefied air. That's basically just Netflix for most software engineers. 400k in total comp is different.
The only way I can see 400k+ salaries is if your requirements are a very restrictive Venn diagram of:
* Geographical location (assuming in person, Bay Area / SV?)
* FAANG experience (is it an actual requirement?)
* Seniority (does not necessarily translate to ability... but it does translate to higher asking salary!)
* Niche technical or industry skills
* Golang experience (which wouldn't explain 400k+ by itself, but may restrict the candidate pool further)
If you're seeing $200/hr, that is high but not unreasonable for a good freelancer and smaller engagements. $400k for a 1 year full time freelance contract is pushing it. $400k/year for a salary position seems borderline crazy to me!
When I was laid off almost a year ago, it wasn't clear how much of a pay hit I'd need to take to get a job in the new market conditions.
I'll not apply because I doubt I'm qualified but if you have a link with the job posting I'd be glad to share with my circle.
Are you looking for a salaried employee or a partner. A partner would share your vision, but get a significant portion of the company. A salaried engineer doesn't have an upside if and when your company takes off.
It could change the dynamics a lot.
I'm in New Zealand. I'm paid approx $120k USD as a staff engineer equivalent at a conaultancy, and I think that's about market rate if you're good. I've never worked for a FAANG (was at Xero in the early days though).
You could hire three and a half of me for the price of one ex FAANG person in your city.
NZ is English speaking and has a fair amount of time zone overlap with the US west coast. We do have proper labour laws though :P
That could affect the 3.5x number.
However, I literally cannot afford FAANG salaries at my stage. It would literally bring my runway from n to n/5 years. And many candidates are asking for 400k+ salaries. I’d love to hire someone who knows what they’re doing but I’m just not able to find people who are both qualified and interested in the work. (If this is you then message me!)
I had one person today - with lots of FAANG experience who’d recently gone freelance - tell me that they weren’t willing to work with me to write code but they were willing to do advising for $450/hr. We just weren’t on the same page.
I don’t know what’s going on, and I hurt for people who are looking for work. I’m launching more slowly than I’d like because I am not able to find a partner to build things with who is willing to work for less than what they made after 10 years at Google.