

Explore Salaries and Equity at AngelList - rmah
https://angel.co/salaries

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zomgbbq
NYC, mobile developers, most jobs are in the 70-80k range with 1-3% equity.
That is a low salary at a small amount of equity for someone with a relatively
in-demand skillset.

Please check my maths: in the best case scenario, if you get 3% equity and
assume 33% dilution on that equity after an A-round and the company has a 10%
chance of a medium 25MM exit, the EV is around $50k. If you assume the same
developer could have made a $120k salary with no equity elsewhere that company
would have to exit within 1.25yrs for it to be +EV which is probably not
feasible.

Someone please check my maths as I am looking at exit values from a 2006
study: [http://qph.cf.quoracdn.net/main-
qimg-77bb58e10c69517534aaac1...](http://qph.cf.quoracdn.net/main-
qimg-77bb58e10c69517534aaac13b36e00dd)

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noname123
According to Glassdoor:

Sr. Software Engineer at Google, on average (sample size of 189) make $145K on
average with $63K bonus for $200K per annum.

So for an average equity of 1.125% for developer (according to angel.co) and
average salary of $93K, a startup has to make a non-diluted exit of 8.56 mil
on the first year, 17.1 mil on the second year and 25.6 mil in the third year
to justify the opportunity cost.

Of course, not every developer can make $200K per year but just food for
thought of working for startup vs. BigCo.

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vecter
That's not taking into account other important factors:

    
    
        * Work on a new potentially game-changing product as part of the founding team
        * Join a small team where you'lll have more say in the production direction and company growth
        * Opportunity to grow responsibilities as the company grows
        * Gain startup experience and expand your network
        * Potential huge upside you'll never get at $150K/year + $50K bonus balanced by high risk of failure

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ProblemFactory
I've worked at both the "BigCo's" (including Google) and "cool new" startups.
In summary, it is almost pointless to compare working at big companies and
startups.

The variance within both groups is much larger than the differences between
the groups. There are pretty good, and very boring big companies. There are
amazing, and _hugely terrible_ startups. To find something that you will enjoy
you have to evaluate each opportunity separately based on your preferences,
not choose a company size first.

All these "important factors" are as much of a marketing tagline as they are
an actual benefit. In some startups they might be the case. Probably yes if
you are employee number 1-2 but not 10-20, let alone 100-200. But in
comparison to some other startups a big company may deliver more value for
_all_ of them.

~~~
levlandau
Company size is still meaningfully correlated with certain facts and so the
distinction ahead of time is meaningful despite the large variance within each
group.

In other words, for various reasons (like learning, wearing multiple hats,
building up a network, the desire to start a startup) it makes sense to decide
ahead of time to work at a startup versus a big company. As long as you work
with great people on a mission you are passionate about.

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greghinch
I would take job postings on AngelList with a grain of salt. We're keeping an
eye there quite a bit recently, and it seems there are strategic reasons (as
in make it look like you are doing well to investors) to be posting jobs on a
site like AngelList more than the practical ones. I'd say the equity numbers
are probably closer to reality than the salaries (I'd be _shocked_ if you as a
developer got more than 3% at any company that is beyond seed round). Of
course early-mid stage startups aren't going to just flat out _offer_ lots of
money, they are trying to make their runway last as long as possible.

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nivi
Hey, this is Nivi from AngelList. Please let me know if you have any
questions. And please keep the comments coming. We are iterating on it right
now.

~~~
walshemj
are you going to internationalize the salary for non US locations.

£ for the Uk and Eros for the Eurozone countrys (BTW for some eu countrys you
need to mention if you get the 13th Month or not)

~~~
momoro
We don't track of what currency job postings are in, so the stats for non-USD
job listings would be confusing. Some people are posting in USD, others in
Euros, etc.

It's something we should do.

For now, you can see what jobs we have in any location at angel.co/jobs
(filter by location).

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31reasons
1-3% equity for an employee of an early stage startup sounds ridiculously low.
Are employees taking less risk than founders ? I think unless you pay salaries
at standard market price they should be considered founders.

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jonathanjaeger
Wrong. There's a big difference between taking $20-50K less per year in salary
and chugging away for years with little or no pay. Whether you're full-time as
an entrepreneur trying to make a startup or slaving away in your free time,
when you could be out partying, there's an inherent risk in time and money
that is not the same as a simple pay cut.

~~~
31reasons
In my opinion founders chug away for years with little or no pay because they
love it. If someone think of it as a sacrifice towards achieving billions then
they should be doing something else. You have to enjoy the process.
Quantifying your sacrifices in "Fun" is harder than calculating your financial
risks and I think equity should be based on that. Partying all the time is not
a bad idea if you love it.

~~~
chii
I think you can't use subjective measures like 'enjoyment' when doing this
sort of calculation.

I feel the best way to split equity is to make the standard salary "swappable"
with equity. let me give an example:

say 1 founder, 1 early employee. At the start, there is $100k in the bank that
the founder put in (or otherwise managed to get). Founder has 100% equity, so
each 1% equity is "worth" $1000;

first year, lets say the employee worked and produced $100k worth of value.
Lets further say the normal rate is $100k for that employee. So the company
has $200k worth of value, even tho there is only $100k in the bank. The
employee could take 0% equity, and $100k in money. Or, 50% equity, and $0
money (and all scale variation in between).

~~~
31reasons
If you look from investment perspective, Programs like Y Combinator and other
incubators take 6-10% of the equity for $20000 seed money and mentoring. Why
can an early developer/designer can't ask for 6-10% for working for $20k-$50k
less than their market value. They are literally investing $20k+ in your
company and adding value by doing work.

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pc86
The graphs bother me. Okay, so 61 Python developer positions offer 0.5-1% and
59 offer 0.25-0.5%; presumably 0.5% is more common than 0.49 or 0.51, so where
is 0.5 categorized? Which value is inclusive in the range and which is
exclusive?

Since the graphs tend to be split on relatively common values they don't add
much insight to the job postings.

~~~
momoro
Good point. This is fixed. Ranges are now .25-.4%, .5-.9%, etc. Thanks for the
feedback. - mischa @ angellist

~~~
pc86
Now what about 0.401%?

Kidding :)

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psychotik
A mobile developer with iOS skills makes 65k in San Jose but 90k+ in all the
little cities around it. Something must really suck about San Jose. ;)

Practically though, this exposes their underlying data source. Averaging
across limite data sources can suck sometimes.

~~~
momoro
Thanks, good feedback. We cleaned up the locations.

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dpeck
Perhaps my perception of the cost of living multiple for the bay area is
distorted, but I can't believe that anyone is working as a developer there for
the lower side of that curve.

Those offerings seem comparable to what I see here in Atlanta.

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joshmlewis
What's the startup scene in Atlanta like? I visited MailChimp there and
attended a conference a few months ago. I live in Greenville, SC and we have
an interesting little hub here.

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dpeck
Honestly, I'm kind of one off from the startup scene. I have quite a fews
friends and acquaintances involved in it, but I've always worked for small to
lower mid size stable companies or firms designed to stay small.

But that said, my somewhat outside opinion is that things are going well and
getting better. There are some good hotspots of startup activity with
hypepotamous (<http://www.hypepotamus.com>), Atlanta Tech Village
(<http://atlantatechvillage.com/>), Flashpoint and a couple other
accelerators.

Combined with the human and other resources from Georgia Tech, other colleges,
and I think its a good place to be.

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gourneau
Ah, I feel like I have been scooped. I have been working on the same thing.
Except mine is a scatter plot with all 4,500 jobs at once, so use Chrome. No
fancy searching yet. Check it out at

<http://labs.radiantmachines.com/al/>

~~~
veemjeem
Interesting, but not sure how useful the chart is. It might have more utility
with some aggregation in there.

~~~
gourneau
It isn't really fully baked yet. I have been using it for myself to see the
clusters of salary vs equity for certain keywords and roles. I need to move
the backend to the web.

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paddy_m
These seem to be job listings. It would be great to see the fill rate. Of job
boards out there, Angellist is the best about showing salary/equity. The
companies that they attract are very early stage though, so salaries are
fairly low.

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auston
a lot lower than i expected - also would love to see the package (so $150k +
.5-1%) distribution.

~~~
mbesto
I question why equity is on a bar chart as it's not a directly comparable
attribute. 1% of a 100,000 units is incrementally different from 1% of 10,000
units.

It does at least "set a bar", so I could potentially say "well on average 1%
of the company for a developer is average."

~~~
outside1234
I don't understand your statement about how 1% of 100,000 shares is different
from 1% of 10,000. How is it different?

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danielweber
You reminded me of the startup I did where we would offer people 1% of the
company, and the candidates would say "that's only 2000 shares. This other
company is offering me 50,000 shares."

It can get depressing trying to hire people sometimes.

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unstoppable
Sounds like you may need to revise your screening process... these people
should not get this far.

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danielweber
We were hiring developers, not finance people.

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billmalarky
I'm not an employer, but a developer not understanding how percentages work
would be a red flag to me.

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pnathan
No seattle/portland?

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momoro
Just added these. We don't have enough listings in Portland to show data, but
Seattle is now there.

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bigsassy
Mind adding Washington DC as well?

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momoro
Added - thanks for the suggestion!

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jasiek
How about some european cities? London/Berlin?

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momoro
Re: Non-US cities - we aren't keeping track of what currency job postings are
in, so the data for non-USD job listings would be confusing. Some people are
posting in USD, others in euros, etc.

For now, you can see what jobs we have in London, or anywhere else by going to
angel.co/jobs and then filtering by location.

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shmerl
What explains certain patterns in number of available positions in each salary
range for different cities? Look for example on difference in ratios between
east and west coasts (compare New York and San Francisco for example). Note:
I'm looking at developers' data.

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equity
need to work on the site speed for those lookups.

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bitcartel
Quite surprising that not a single job opening has listed Perl as a skill
requirement.

Is there really zero demand for Perl programmers from new start-ups?

~~~
rboyd
I miss the 90s too. especially the music.

