I'd guess that current hires would be getting significantly less than existing hires. To make really life changing money you'd need to get in a couple of years ago.
Almost certainly a lot of that would be variable comp depending upon a bunch of things. And I could also imagine a $10m gig (especially with speculative equity) at a company with really exciting prospects could trump a $50m one for a stodgy company not going anywhere.
This is true, but there's opportunity cost as well: those same first hires would be significantly more likely to make that 500k-3mil over a few years at a FAAMG-type company, anyway.
So thus, the right salary to hire the people they need is somewhere between what they're currently paying, and $1B/year. My guess—and this is only a guess, mind you—is that they'd still be able to staff up on something significantly lower than $1B. But I'm not an economist, so I might be wrong there.
You also need to factor in loss of productivity while bringing a new hire into an organisation.
They won't be 100% productive (50% might be aspirational for some roles for the first few months) and they will also reduce the productivity of their colleagues while they are brought up to speed.
I'm not saying it's not a good opportunity for the right person. I'm just saying that by starting with a salary that low, the odds of them keeping the person around more than a year or two are slim. That may or may not matter, depending on the objective.
I agree with all that you say. Not sure about something though. I'm not sure you'd have access to the information that would allow you to discover/see the possibility of changes that could allow millions of dollars in positive changes. Also, I'm thinking in ranges of $10-$100 million+ per year ranges; Larger ecosystems, etc.. and to have such an influence in an existing company, where they'd be willing to pay you out anything other than bonus or work you're way up to a million-dollar salary, would require many many years working at said time, with lots of risk that you wouldn't be rewarded adequately.
Interesting. How do you account that? Two good hires can probably repeatably be obtained for under $100k in spending or giving away $100k of your company. Since Daniel G (dang) works on HN full time, and almost certainly makes more than $100k, that doesn't make sense to me.
Anyone that can make hiring better would make a fortune. Even if you can make something super specialized like hiring for ai programmers or biochemists would make a fortune.
All of whom have relevant knowledge and experience which tends to only be acquired by making enough money that they don't have to work again. Care to revise your estimate of the money it would take to hire them upwards?
I am quite sure someone about as competent would do his job for far less. I got this feeling the higher you go the less skill based recruitment is and the more connections and friends matter.
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