Perhaps you can argue that startup equity grants should be higher. Would hiring issues be resolved if the average equity grant tripled? Would more talented people in the U.S. pursue Silicon Valley careers if they got 3% instead of 1% to be an early employee?

I can't prove it, but I'd conjecture it would only have a modest effect. The notion of "expected value" of equity is problematic. It's not like it's simply a 3X stronger offer. The bigger issue is whether the company will be worth anything at all.

[+] I'm agnostic on this. Pinterest just raised, what, $450 million dollars? That's presumably not intended to buy the world's biggest vat of chocolate pudding.

It used to be that it did in fact take millions of VC just to get startups off the ground (70s, 80s, 90s). We could go back there. Would it be better for the ecosystem? Would employees have a net gain, or would there be fewer early stage companies & jobs? I don't know, but these are the macroeconomic questions to consider.

If the cash cost of running experiments goes way up, that may very well mean going back to the old way of doing things, where you essentially had to jump straight to VC money just to get off the ground.

http://www.kalzumeus.com/2014/11/07/doing-business-in-japan/

(I could pull an answer to your question out of this -- hint, search the page for a dollar sign -- but if you're reading "out of curiosity" you should just get some coffee or something and read the whole glorious thing, because the number is useless without the context, and the context is very different from the USA.)

Maybe this would force VC companies to be more selective in who they fund, vs "fund 100 and hope for 1 to be the next google".

IMO, no. The difference between founder and employee #1 is still too large, even though the risk is not significantly higher.

Assume there are two founders, splitting 50/50, then there's a 10% employee option pool, so the founders have 45% each. Moving from 1 -> 3% is not enough incentive, but moving from 1->10% might be.

Welcome to running a business. You aren't guaranteed anything. If you can't survive, you die. Tough. That's life.

Or not even $120k. You'd be surprised at what some SV companies get away with. Take a look at angel list and you'll commonly see wages lower than $100k for experienced developers.

I'd say the only epidemic that exists in the US's technology field is a lack of adequate compensation, not a lack of talent.

http://blog.sfgate.com/nov05election/2013/09/20/profs-immigr...

I find it remarkable that people make claims of shortages without sharing information about the skill set they need and the compensation they're offering. Well, I don't find it remarkable, in the sense that I don't find PR-speak especially surprising anymore. I guess I should say I find it galling.

Yes, people routinely under-estimate salaries of engineers in the bay area. And I certainly know people at Google and Apple who have comp packages in the neighborhood you mention. But I'm skeptical of calling that the "norm", and even if it is, it's only the norm for RSU-granting, established tech companies. Half the employment for engineers in the area is for smaller companies with ISO grants with Expected Value well below $300k and salaries 25% below your quote.

What's wonderful for engineers in the SFBA is that you have this choice. Take a front row seat at a startup and consistently make $110-130k, go to a huge tech giant like Google and make far more in a more narrowly defined role, or pick some place in the middle. Like Trulia, for example! We're always hiring Android and iOS engineers.

I've seen many studies of tech hiring/jobs across the country. I'm sure you can find any research you're looking for.

http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_41860.htm#15-0000 http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_35620.htm#15-0000

Edit: Also, counting the total headcount of ppl writing code in the area is not a measure of how many choices you have in the job market.

Still doesn't get you into more choice than NYC.

If you don't want to use head count (and I agree there is nuance), what do you want to use? Thus my citation needed request.

The vast majority of software developers work in IT departments writing line-of-business applications in Java, .Net, etc. Certainly NYC has a vast number of these jobs. But these roles are all very similar. You're working as a cost-center, in a supporting role, for people who ultimately don't care about software. This is true whether you're a developer for Pfizer or Jet Blue or NBC Universal or any of the other companies based in

I really find the hollywood analogy apt. Yes, you can certainly find work as an actor in NYC. But the epicenter of the industry is in Hollywood.

Anyway, happy new year!

also if engineers had fewer choices, wages would be lower, wouldn't they ?

That said, if you're an experienced engineer and you told me you wanted to make $200k next year, if you're in NYC I would say "go into finance" which is far more limited than the advice I would give in SFBA which is "go work for just about any publicly traded tech company, or slightly more risky go work for a tech company that seems to have an imminent IPO, or more risky still go work for a well-funded private marquee tech company (many of these companies would overlap with the 2nd group). In the end, it's a much bigger pond.

Look, I'm not saying NYC is void of these types of opportunities. I've got friends who work in the city for Tumblr and Spotify among others. I'm just saying, it's about density. You could take the skyline of SF and put it in a few blocks of lower manhattan. And you could take the tech population of NYC and put it in a "few blocks" of SF.

All that said, the relation to wages is more complicated than you suggest. Less variety doesn't speak to the balance between labor talent and demand.

All I am saying is, software development wages are too low, especially relative to the demands of the job - that's why there is a perceived shortage. Raise the wages and smart people from other fields will teach themselves to code and join the fray

I don't think there's any question that if the only thing we do to increase the supply of great coders is to increase immigration quotas, then this basically just amounts to a pyramid scheme to further enrich the silicon valley elites at the expense of the public. But pg never says that this is the only thing we should do, he only says that it's one of the things we should do.

I don't necessarily agree with pg's realpolitik view of reality, but I also think a lot of the criticism of this piece is based on things that just aren't there.

I know things get politically dirty on these kinds of submissions, but the conversation needs to happen -- pg can't just open the lid to say what he wants, and immediately close it. This is our bread and butter on the line, why shouldn't we be able to have this conversation without the submissions constantly getting killed.

It's also a drive-by from an anonymous throwaway account.

To be precise, this thread now has about 80 comments and about 70 upvotes. In the past, at least, HN's software has considered that a "flamewar". Perhaps it's too bad, in this case, since TFA is so much more cogent and reasonable than PG's original self-serving bullshit, but unless you credibly suggest that someone is either inflating comment numbers or deflating upvotes, it is exaggeration to say this has been "killed".

And consider the possibility that your comment is in the "not intellectually stimulating" category.