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tdelet commented on My somewhat complete salary history as a software engineer   humanwhocodes.com/blog/20... · Posted by u/jodooshi
mysalarythrow · 7 years ago
Male, went to a top 5 CS school, US west coast

2001: BigCo $76,000/year + $20,000 signing bonus (first job out of school)

2007: Freelancing between $100-$200/hr depending on project

2012: Startup #1 $180,000/year + $75,000 signing bonus + a bit of stock that's never been worth anything (but I exercised upon leaving and paid a lot of taxes on, so I'm net negative ~$300k)

2015: Startup #2 $240,000/year + lots of stock that's never been worth anything

Some thoughts on equity and BigCos vs. Startups:

Before going to Startup #1 I rejected offer of ~$2MM RSUs at BigCo #2 (since split, now worth ~$15MM) and offer of ~$2MM RSU at BigCo #3 (now worth ~$10MM) in order to join what looked like a sure thing. Got another offer from BigCo #2 a few years later for ~$1MM RSUs (now worth $4MM).

My peers that went to BigCos have done far, far better than me financially. All are above $500k/year in total comp, and quite a few above $1MM/year due to FAANG stocks going up so much.

Startup compensation math just doesn't work when you're competing against the BigCos these days. Liquidity horizons are ~10 years for the few successes that work out, the equity portions are meager (esp after dilution). Even ignoring the risk of no liquidity event, you still come out behind what the big companies are paying these days.

I'll probably never join a startup again, but if I do, all salary assumptions assume an equity value of zero.

tdelet · 7 years ago
not a programmer, but product manager. I feel your pain on startup #1.

The startups are a crapshoot, they can be a great stepping stone, but assume the equity is worth zero. The right 'big company' is going to be more lucrative in most cases by a lot.

Deleted Comment

tdelet commented on Google AMP – A 70% drop in our conversion rate   medium.com/the-set-list/g... · Posted by u/nate
tdelet · 8 years ago
AMP is the worst. I used to get rid of it by going through encrypted.google.com, but unfortunately that's been shut down and I haven't figured out how to use google and not use AMP. But I still want to.

I do find myself using Chrome on android less and less primarily because of AMP

tdelet commented on The Utter Uselessness of Job Interviews   nytimes.com/2017/04/08/op... · Posted by u/tomek_zemla
tdelet · 9 years ago
The problem is that most people have no training in how exactly to interview someone. It's like asking people with no training in building rockets to get you to the Moon and then deciding that because because they failed tickets are "utterly useless".
tdelet commented on Electron is flash for the desktop (2016)   josephg.com/blog/electron... · Posted by u/charlieirish
tdelet · 9 years ago
Is being "Flash for the desktop" considered a good thing?

Wasn't AIR Flash for the desktop? And didn't that already flop?

u/tdelet

KarmaCake day1April 11, 2017View Original