If they're 100x in a couple of years (assuming such individuals exist) then you'll be paying them a hell of a lot more in a couple of years. What you're saying would be reasonable if they were signing employees to long-term contracts at a fixed wage based on current productivity.
Do you think they have much incentive to make that extra $2k, while introducing more risk, and not spending time on the other openings they're working?
Elsewhere in this thread it's said that in the compensation package there's a big payout if the company is acquired. Though I can't imagine how huge it would have to be that paying each employee six months of salary is cheaper.
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.
At many (most?) companies in US, it's easier to get approval for an additional employee costing $90k/year forever, than to spend a one-off $50k on a consulting project.
There's always a price. I wouldn't work that job for $100k/yr; I would work it for 1000 times the amount. Somewhere in the middle is, technically, the right price.
This all gets silly when looked at in isolation, though. :-) I'd agree that there's not always an amount of compensation that the company could pay that would also attract enough workers.
Because it is more like $200K/year and 0.1% chance of $500K or $75K/year and a 0.1% chance of $5M. It would be silly to take the latter over an expected 5 year tenure.
According to who? For those that have successfully retrained from school teachers and shop technicians and into software devs, more than doubling their pay, I think they would consider it quite good. That they're working in the industry, despite whatever aspersions get cast their way, they're still working there and bringing home the bacon. The monetary specifics of the deal may be sour to some, even the successful ones, as the linked article talks about ($40k is a lot of money, even if you're making $100k!), but $100k is nothing to sneeze at if you were making $50k before.
Because if you can get a $150k candidate, they'll work on X and Z, but a $100k candidate may only work on X and Y or maybe just only X. Y and Z are nice to have, but only X is worth hiring for; whichever candidate gets through first gets the position.
Market for the people USDS is hiring generally is higher than that in cash, plus better benefits, plus 50-100k/yr in equity. There is some sacrifice, but not an insurmountable one.
In my career, I've only seen one person contribute significantly within 6 months, and they got a 10% pay boost that quickly. "Contribution" is a lot more than just "Hey! I deployed some code!". The first year for an employee is mostly just breaking even on the cost to hire them. Hiring is expensive^. For a junior role, it's probably 1x salary. For an experienced hire, it can easily be 2x salary. That means that hiring someone at a 100k salary has actually already cost you 150k by the time they leave 6 months into their job. I sincerely doubt they've managed to contribute 150k revenue to your bottom line.
^ This is why nepotism is so strong. I got my job through my brother, which was effectively free for my employer. Beyond just that cost, it makes me more likely to stay. The next hire cost us 70k, and he ended up leaving after... you got it! 6 months.
I don't think it's too high. If all you're willing to pay is 100k, I'm not prepared to believe that you're trying to hire a desperately needed, highly skilled worker, especially in silicon valley (where claims of a shortage are loudest). Not even close.
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