
The Engineer Crunch - clarkm
http://blog.samaltman.com/the-engineer-crunch
======
GuiA
I'm starting to be a bit disillusioned with this whole "we can't find great
people" spiel that a lot of startups put up.

I have friends who are extremely good engineers (i.e., a mix of: contributors
to major open source projects used by a lot of SV startups, have given talks
at large conferences, published papers at ACM conferences, great portfolio of
side/student projects, have worked at great companies previously, frequently
write high quality tech articles on their blog, have high reputations on sites
like Stack Overflow, etc.) and who have been rejected at interviews from those
same companies who say that they can't find talent. (it also certainly doesn't
help that the standard answer is "we're sorry, we feel like there isn't a
match right now" rather than something constructive. "No match" can mean
anything on the spectrum that starts at "you're a terrible engineer and we
don't want you" and ends at "one of our interviewers felt threatened by you
because you're more knowledgeable so he veto'd you").

Seriously, if you're really desperate for engineering talent, I can give you
contact info for a dozen or so of friends who are ready to work for you RIGHT
NOW (provided your startup isn't an awful place with awful people, of course)
and probably another dozen or two who would work for you given enough
convincing.

I'm honestly starting to believe that it isn't hard to hire, but that there's
some psychological effect at play that leads companies to make it harder on
themselves out of misplaced pride or sense of elitism.

Unless everyone wants to hire Guido Van Rossum or Donald Knuth, but then a)
statistically speaking, you're just setting yourself up for failure and b) you
need to realize that those kind of people wouldn't want to do the glorified
web dev/sys admin'ing that a lot of SV jobs are.

~~~
nqureshi
"I'm honestly starting to believe that it isn't hard to hire"

If this were true, then engineer salaries would not be rising so much. The
demand for good engineers vastly outstrips supply.

Also, any explanation that requires you to posit mass irrationality is usually
a bad one.

~~~
djb_hackernews
Do you have any data to back up the engineering salaries rising "so much"?

From where I am standing engineering salaries have stagnated for the last 5
years, possibly even 10.

~~~
j_baker
You're correct. Source: [http://www.epi.org/publication/pm195-stem-labor-
shortages-mi...](http://www.epi.org/publication/pm195-stem-labor-shortages-
microsoft-report-distorts/)

~~~
russell_h
My observation has been that while average compensation isn't trending upward
that much, variance is increasing a lot. I've seen market research which bears
this out. Especially among top candidates straight out of school, salaries
have gone up a lot in the last few years.

------
pg
"I have never seen a startup regret being generous with equity for their early
employees."

Same here. I always advise startups to err on the side of generosity with
equity.

~~~
tomsaffell
Can you put a number (or range) on what is generous for the first engineering
hire? 2%? 3%? 5%?

~~~
balls187
This is a great post by Fred Wilson about this subject.

[http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/04/how-to-allocate-founder-
and-...](http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2011/04/how-to-allocate-founder-and-employee-
equity.html)

Essentially, figure out what market rate is for their salary. Since you'll
likely pay a discount rate, the equity should bring them at or above market.

So if Market is 105k, and I'm going to pay 55k, I will give you 50k in equity
(based on a reasonable valuation--assuming you don't have an actual
valuation).

Using a flat rate percent can get tricky, and you can easily end up
unnecessarily diluting yourself.

I also think it's important to think of your first 1-3 hires as Key hires, the
same way a new CEO or VP of Sales would be a key hire post Series-B. You want
them to get a big chunk of money if there is a positive liquidation event.

~~~
jbail
A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush.

If market rate is $105k and you're paying me $55k in cash, then I'd want $100k
in equity, not $50k. This is something many startups get wrong. It isn't a
one-to-one swap.

Even if you have some sort of reasonable valuation, equity is worthless until
there's someone to sell it to. There needs to be an uncertainty/illiquidity
multiple applied. Otherwise, I'll take the cash. That has literally always
worked out to my benefit throughout my 15 year career in software development
(even working for companies that got acquired for 9 digits).

~~~
balls187
Fair enough. I was paraphrasing the actual formula.

That said, if you think equity is worthless, why are you considering being
employee 1 at a startup?

~~~
jbail
I never said I thought equity is worthless. I said I would choose cash over
equity if the equity is not weighted heavier than cash to account for the risk
and illiquidity inherent in startup equity.

I am engineer #1 at a startup right now. The equity was very generous and
weighted appropriately vs cash.

~~~
balls187
Sorry, I mistook your earlier statement to believe that you thought equity is
worthless, when you were just saying there is no cash value for equity.

And yes, you're correct, the equity should be setup in a way that offers early
hires significant upside.

Curious, did your founders use a flat %, or did they figure out some weighted
amount?

------
jfasi
> if people are going to turn down the certainty of a huge salary at Google,
> they should get a reward for taking that risk.

I often see a disconnect between perceptions of expected success of founders
and engineers. I've observed this is particularly pointed for non-technical
founders. To generalize, a young entrepreneur with some success under his belt
is starting a company. As far as he's concerned his company is all but
guaranteed to succeed: he's got the experience and sophistication necessary to
make this happen, the team he's hired to his point is top-notch, he's got the
attention of some investors, the product is well thought out, etc. He
approaches an exceptional engineer and extends an impassioned invitation
and... the engineer balks.

What happened? Is he delusional about the company's prospects, thinking he's
got a sure fire hit when he's actually in for a nasty surprise once his hubris
collides with reality? Is the engineer a square who would rather work a boring
job at a big company than live his life, and wouldn't be a good fit for the
team anyway?

I propose a different resolution: our confident businessman is certain about
the success of _the company_ , not the success of the _engineer as part of the
company_. He knows the company's success is going to rocket him into an elite
circle of Startup Entrepreneurs. The engineer, on the other hand, doesn't see
the correlation between the company's success and his own: even if the company
takes off to the tune of eight to nine digits, his little dribble of equity is
just barely breaking even over the comfortable stable position he's in now.

------
x0x0
This post, I think, makes 2 mistakes.

First, sf and the valley simply don't pay engineers well enough. This is the
second, striving to become the first, most expensive housing market in the
united states. $150k sounds great here until you look at that as a fraction of
your housing cost and compare to _anywhere_ else in the country, including
manhattan (because unlike here, nyc isn't run by morons so they have
functioning transportation systems). I don't want to just quote myself, but
all this still applies:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7195118](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7195118)

Second, immigration is a crutch to get around paying domestic employees
enough. I see net emigration from the valley amongst experienced engineers in
their 30s who start having families and can find better financial lives
elsewhere. If companies paid well enough that moving to the bay area wasn't
horrid financially, they'd find plenty of software engineering talent already
in the united states. But consider my friend above: $165 total income in the
midwest is (compared solely to housing cost) equivalent to approx $450k here,
when holding (housing costs / post tax income) constant.

edit: not to mention, companies _still_ don't want flexible employment
arrangements or remote work. I'm a data scientist and I'm good at my job
(proof: employment history, employers haven't wanted me to leave, track record
of accomplishments.) I'd rather live elsewhere. 66 data scientist posts on
craigslist (obv w/ some duplication, but just a quick count) [1]; jobs that
mention machine learning fill search results with > 100 answers [2]. Now check
either of the above for telecommute or part time. Zero responses for remote or
part time workers. So again, employers want their perfect employee -- skilled
at his or her job, wants to move to the valley enough to take a big hit to net
life living standards, doesn't have kids, and doesn't want them (cause daycare
or a nanny or an SO who doesn't work is all very expensive.)

[1]
[http://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/jjj?zoomToPosting=&catAbb...](http://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/jjj?zoomToPosting=&catAbb=jjj&query=data+scientist&excats=)

[2]
[http://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/jjj?zoomToPosting=&catAbb...](http://sfbay.craigslist.org/search/jjj?zoomToPosting=&catAbb=jjj&query=machine+learning&excats=)

~~~
Consultant32452
Living in a high cost of living area is a FANTASTIC way to get your retirement
plans going. Putting 10% of your SF income into your 401k is way better than
putting 10% of your Austin, TX salary into your 401k. So while you're young
and single you bank away lots of cash. Then you move and start a family
elsewhere and retire comfortably. The problem is that I don't think enough
people life-hack in this way.

~~~
RogerL
This is true, but 401K contributions are capped at around $17K. You can do
that with the Austin salary just as well, usually. In Austin you have no state
income tax, and the price of everything else is much lower (in general).

The absolute cheapest home near my work with 2 bedrooms is a condo at $700K
(source: realtor.com). (edit: that is an outlier, most are considerably more
expensive, and these days the 'ask' is the lowball figure - people will bid
several hundred thousand over the ask to buy, because they are competing
against other twitter millionaires buying for cash and nonchalant about the
housing bubble because they can't be really hurt if it crashes)

To get a home equal to the home I moved from in CO (which I bought for $425K)
would be, I don't know, nothing is listed to compare. Over $3M I would think.
My friend recently sold his house north of that, and his yard was tiny and the
house was smaller. My CO house is comparable to a $4-5M Tahoe mountain home -
a few acres, awesome views, wooden beam interior, huge open space interior
plan, full basement, multiple decks, and so on. (edit: okay, cabinets are Home
Depot, not custom built, etc, but it's still a close comp otherwise)

So, yes, if you want to live in a cramped condo, see your money evaporate to
taxes, driving to work, private schools, and so on, you can 'life hack' here.
Or, you can live elsewhere, own a few acres, have a big garage, a rec room,
work normal hours, have half the commute, and still save plenty of money.

~~~
usaar333
> So, yes, if you want to live in a cramped condo, see your money evaporate to
> taxes, driving to work, private schools, and so on, you can 'life hack'
> here. Or, you can live elsewhere, own a few acres, have a big garage, a rec
> room, work normal hours, have half the commute, and still save plenty of
> money.

While you aren't going to be living on a few acres working at a tech job in
the Bay Ara (barring long commutes), you are exaggerating a bit here.

\- If you live in SF, you generally don't need to drive to work. Your commute
will be short (<25 minutes). You can get quite livable single-family homes (3
bedrooms, 1400 square feet) for $750k. You may want to consider private
schools.

\- If you live in areas where you want to get good public schools, prices may
surge to $900k for homes that size.

tl;dr If you want a huge home with huge lots, yes, very difficult in the Bay
Area. But if you just want a typical suburban lfiestyle, it is pretty easy to
do on a tech salary.

~~~
vonmoltke
> \- If you live in SF, you generally don't need to drive to work. Your
> commute will be short (<25 minutes). You can get quite livable single-family
> homes (3 bedrooms, 1400 square feet) for $750k. You may want to consider
> private schools.

I live in Dallas, have a driving commute well under 25 minutes, and have a 3
bedroom, 2300 sqft house I paid $175k for with the same stipulation on the
schools. Your scenario would be a major cost increase for me. In fact, I could
probably max out my 401k here with just the housing cost delta. Austin is more
expensive than Dallas[1], but I wouldn't expect to pay more than about $250k -
$300k for my house there (for reference, my house is worth about $190k now). I
could downsize to your SF-sized house here for under $100k. Since I would
realistically only get about a 70% pay raise max over my Dallas salary for
moving to SF, it doesn't make any sense.

[1] And my house was a good deal even for Dallas.

------
OmarIsmail
“The only thing you need to do is fix immigration for founders and engineers.
This will likely have far more of an impact than all of the government
innovation programs put together.” - this is so darn true it's not even funny.

Conversely, and I know this is pretty out there, this is what I think will be
the killer app of virtual reality. If I can ship a $5K "pod" to a developer
somewhere in the world which allows us to work together 90% as well as we can
in person, then you're damn right I'm going to do that.

I believe VR tech will get good enough (3-5 years) before immigration issues
will be sorted out (10-20).

~~~
Filligree
Taxing that is going to be _fun_.

~~~
eru
Why? It's no more complicated from a tax perspective that remote work is
today.

------
tptacek
Broken record: startups are also probably rejecting a _lot_ of engineering
candidates that would perform as well or better than anyone on their existing
team, because tech industry hiring processes are folkloric and irrational.

I co-manage a consultancy. We operate in the valley. We're in a very
specialized niche that is especially demanding of software development skills.
Our skills needs also track the market, because we have to play on our clients
turf. Consultancies running in steady state have an especially direct
relationship between recruiting and revenue.

A few years ago, we found ourselves crunched. We turned a lot of different
knobs to try to solve the problem. For a while, Hacker News was our #1
recruiting vehicle. We ran ads. We went to events at schools. We shook down
our networks and those of our team (by offering larger and larger recruiting
bonuses, among other things).

We have since resolved this problem. My current perspective is that we have
little trouble filling slots as we add them, in _any_ market --- we operate in
Chicago (where it is trivially easy to recruit), SFBA (harder), and NYC
(hardest). We've been in a comfortable place with recruiting for almost a year
now (ie, about half the lifetime of a typical startup).

I attribute our success to just a few things:

* We created long-running outreach events (the Watsi-pledging crypto challenges, the joint Square MSP CTF) that are graded so that large numbers of people can engage and get value from them, but people who are especially interested in them can self-select their way to talking to us about a job. Worth mentioning: the crypto challenges, which are currently by far our most successful recruiting vehicle (followed by Stripe's CTF #2) are just a series of emails we send; they're essentially a blog post that we weaponized instead of wasting on a blog.

* We totally overhauled our interview process, with three main goals: (1) we over-communicate and sell our roles before we ever get selective with candidates, (2) we use quantifiable work-sample tests as the most important weighted component in selecting candidates, and (3) we standardize interviews so we can track what is and isn't predictive of success.

Both of these approaches have paid off, but improving interviews has been the
more important of the two. Compare the first 2/3rds of Matasano's lifetime to
the last 1/3rd. The typical candidate we've hired lately would never have
gotten hired at early Matasano, because (a) they wouldn't have had the resume
for it, and (b) we over-weighted intangibles like how convincing candidates
were in face-to-face interviews. But the candidates we've hired lately compare
extremely well to our earlier teams! It's actually kind of magical: we
interview people whose only prior work experience is "Line of Business .NET
Developer", and they end up showing us how to write exploits for elliptic
curve partial nonce bias attacks that involve Fourier transforms and BKZ
lattice reduction steps that take 6 hours to run.

How? By running an outreach program that attracts people who are interested in
crypto, and building an interview process that doesn't care what your resume
says or how slick you are in an interview.

Call it the "Moneyball" strategy.

 _Later: if I 've hijacked the thread here, let me know; I've said all this
before and am happy to delete the comment._

~~~
dmunoz
> we use quantifiable work-sample tests as the most important weighted
> component in selecting candidates

Can you speak to that a little? I'm reading it as either programming
challenges in a real environment, or analysis of previous code snippets
submitted. In either case, I'm happy to see more companies doing this.

I'm always looking for ways to improve my interview skills, but I want to do
it honestly. Studying to the test isn't fun for me, I would rather hack on
something.

~~~
tptacek
Most programming puzzles aren't real work-sample tests. A work-sample test has
to be representative of the actual stuff you'd do on the job.

The trick is, to work in a recruiting context, you also want those tests to be
standardized and repeatable. A lot of companies fall down on this. They have
candidates do "real work", often in a pair-programming context. There a bunch
of problems with this:

(1) "Real work" usually isn't standardizable, so you can't compare candidates

(2) Signal quality from the test is intensely dependent on who is doing the
work with the candidate

(3) Two different candidates might end up getting "tests" that are wildly
different in terms of predictive power

I have a bunch of ideas for pure software development work-sample tests, but
I'm not ready to share them. The idea is simple, though:

* It's a realistic exercise that approximates actual day-to-day work as much as possible

* Every candidate gets the same exercises

* The exercises have objective (preferably gradable) outcomes

~~~
theboss
So accurate. I'm a grad student who studied security deeply during my time in
school.

I want to keep my hands on a keyboard and I don't like airplanes (which rules
out consulting) so I've applied at a lot of companies to be a ``security
engineer''.

I can't tell you how many well-respected companies ask me to write min-heaps,
depth-first searches, etc. I don't understand what they are asking me this
for...It isn't even close to a realistic representation of what my day-to-day
responsibilities would be. It is also an immediate turn-off....

~~~
foobarian
I don't understand how there can be a good hacker that does not, at least on
some intuitive level, get such basic data structures or algorithms. I don't
mind if someone doesn't know what depth-first search is, but I should be able
to explain it quickly and they should be able to come up with at least pseudo
code. The relevance of this to software engineering roles just seems too
great.

Cramming these questions online does not work. I don't know what
Facebook/Google et al are doing but I can spot a candidate who studied
interview questions from a mile away. They may bang out a DFS by rote but
that's just warmup; they should be able to talk about details, deal with
changing requirements, discuss the algorithm/efficiency/design of their
solution, be able to talk about underlying data structure primitives, etc.

To be fair the grandparent was talking about a specialized position in
security engineering for which the generic coding interviews could be a bad
match.

~~~
theboss
You're right it isn't well suited for security people.... But is it well
suited for software engineering types? Most code people write is not a search
sort insert etc. Most of the details of using these data structures are
invisible in oop and the difference is only what class was instantiated.

I'm not saying it isn't important to know, but I think there are better
indicators for someone who will perform well on the job

------
jamesaguilar
Given the offers I've heard people getting from early stage startups (engineer
2-5), I don't really get why someone _would_ join them. Below market rate
salary? 0.1% of a company that's going to exit at $80M with a 10% chance and
$0 with a 90% chance? That comes out to $80k over four years of work, before
taxes, in the typical _successful_ case, which is itself atypical. And for
what amounts to a relatively small bonus, I'd be expected to work 50-70 hour
weeks? Sign me up!

~~~
ryandrake
You forgot to include the probability of success in your calculation, for
Expected Value:

EV = $80M exit x 0.1% equity x 10% success rate / 4 years = $2K

That awesome 0.1% equity is worth $2,000 a year. Less, because of time value
of money, and the fact that you won't be cashing out yearly.

~~~
jamesaguilar
Thanks for the correction, but I did not forget it. I explicitly called out
that the $80k total was only in the successful case, which is atypical, and
had not been divided by time yet. That could have been worded better, I admit,
but you and I are in violent agreement.

------
grandalf
This is the most insightful thing I've read about the engineer crunch in a
while. The market needs to realize that good engineers have lots of options
and that 0.1% is just not a meaningful amount. I'd like to see 5-8% for key
engineering hires, even as companies approach Series A.

Does the founder really want to get greedy and keep that extra few percent
when so much depends upon solid engineering execution? Also, don't forget that
4 year vesting with a 1 year cliff is standard, so it's not as if the worth of
a meaningful equity offer isn't fully obvious before the shares are "spent" on
a key hire (also, before vesting, the risk is totally borne by the employee).

I think the ideal situation for engineers would be to earn a solid equity
offer and then have a secondary market to use to trade some of it (once it's
vested) for fractional ISOs of other promising startups.

~~~
dfraser992
> Does the founder really want to get greedy and keep that extra few percent
> when so much depends upon solid engineering execution?

Yes, some of them do. I got forced out of a startup here in London - I was the
_only_ full time engineer in the IT dept. (basically was acting CTO) and one
part time guy in Russia for some period of time. The company had two sales
guys as well, not sure of their compensation but they were making more than
me... We all quit within a period of two months due to A) the CEO flat out
lying to a customer about the nature of the data they were being sold, in
order to secure the sale - the customer later made threats to sue after their
patience had been exhausted due to one founder trying for a month to gaslight
their board about the technical nature of the data B) lies about the "cash
flow problem" which I was told was preventing another person to be hired to
help me (the founders were skimming profit before paying everyone, months
late) The CEO's wife, who liked to play lawyer, then dragged out paying us for
what they owed, trying to arbitrarily reinterpret the language of the
contracts, claiming utter nonsense as logic and being over the top abusive in
contract negotiations. It was all too much for everyone.

Later I found out a $5 mil offer had been made to buy the company from a 3rd
party - not much but enough to show the company was certainly going to be
viable. So it made perfect economic sense to these sociopaths to drive out
everyone who might have some moral claim to profiting from the company's
success (i.e. promises were made early about "equity"). The founders deemed I
was completely unnecessary at this point due to having built something that
could be maintained well enough by cheap labor from India and eLance - to heck
with looking into the future and seeing how an experienced engineer might open
up new markets, etc. This company lost every bit of technical knowledge they
had when I left.

But that's sociopaths for you and how business is done anymore. I'm sure SF is
full of amateur sociopaths these days.

------
djb_hackernews
Wait, I thought we all agreed that there isn't an engineering crunch?

I am not sure what immigration has to do with this, we make plenty of STEM
graduates each year, and we'd make more if the professions didn't look like
they were under attack by every employer and politician. The smart kids you
want to hire are smart enough to go into more protected professions, if they
knew their jobs wouldn't be shipped over seas or their market flooded with
foreign competition, then maybe we'd be able to attract them and keep them.

I worry that focusing on equity will just exacerbate the problem, because I
think that a lot of people are becoming wise to the equity lottery and just
don't see a difference between 0.1% and 5% of nothing. The problem will most
certainly be solved by $$, but no doubt it is tough pill to swallow for a
business to pay 150k now what was 100k a few years ago...

Keep in mind I am a software developer and self interested.

~~~
rwissmann
If you think your equity is worth zero you either work for the wrong company
or do not understand how to use mathematics/probability theory.

~~~
thedufer
One person can only play that particular lottery maybe half a dozen times
(more likely 2-3). That isn't nearly enough for the law of averages to even
things out, so if you don't have a lot of room for risk, the rational thing is
to value the equity at 0 (in terms of long-term planning) and be pleasantly
surprised if things turn out better than that.

------
trustfundbaby
The other thing that is interesting to me is the ludicrously highbar, and
"weed out" interview techniques that some these companies have for recruiting
engineers.

They're looking for someone to work on a rails app but they won't hire them
unless they have demonstrated Linus-Torvalds like ability and knowledge. But
the question is, why would someone with that kind of skill level want to work
for you?

What if you were able to grab smart engineers on their way to becoming
engineering stars? Why not aim for getting a solid lead/architect and adding
midlevel guys who you know are going to turn into superstars? Why not develop
talent instead of competing all the way at the top of the market for the most
expensive ones? Why not figure out an interview technique that can let you
identify exactly these kinds of people?

Its all about being resourceful and nimble enough to adjust, after all, isn't
that what a startup is all about?

------
bgentry
_I have never seen a startup regret being generous with equity for their early
employees._

A few years ago, Zynga told some early employees with lots of shares that they
had to give back some of their stock or they'd be fired:

[http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-57322150-17/zynga-to-
emplo...](http://news.cnet.com/8301-13506_3-57322150-17/zynga-to-employees-
give-back-our-stock-or-youll-be-fired/)

[http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2011/11/10/zynga-stock-
scanda...](http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2011/11/10/zynga-stock-scandal/)

I'm not sure if that qualifies as "regret", or if it's just greed, but it's
one very public example of a company deciding they've given too many options
to early employees.

~~~
prostoalex
Everybody else fires, they were nice enough to say "if you like it here, you
can stay".

Most of people involved came through acquisitions, not early hiring.

------
Xdes
>There are great hackers all over the country, and many of them can be talked
into moving to the valley.

For all this "we work remote" stuff that is flying around this seems to be a
direct contradiction. Is moving to the valley really necessary? I can
postulate coming for a face-to-face interview, but I would never want to move
to California.

~~~
AnimalMuppet
It's all about communication bandwidth. How well can I communicate with you
face-to-face, via voice, or via text? Standard numbers are that 7% of the
communication is in the words, 38% is in the tone of voice, and 55% is in the
body language. If you're not face-to-face, your communication bandwidth drops
dramatically.

But if you're both online at the same time, and you have videoconferencing or
some equivalent, you can talk "face-to-face" without being on the same
continent. I don't know how efficient that is compared to being in the same
room, but I suspect it's somewhat less (you have to activate the app before
you can have the conversation, and you never have a useful but accidental
conversation because you ran into each other in the lunchroom).

~~~
nawitus
>Standard numbers are that 7% of the communication is in the words, 38% is in
the tone of voice, and 55% is in the body language.

Source? I'm pretty skeptical of these kinds of numbers. If you say 100 bits
worth of words face-to-face, what is exactly the content of the remaining 1428
bits?

~~~
gjm11
The claim (ascribed to Albert Mehrabian) is much more limited than that. Those
are the alleged percentage influences on _how much we like a person_ on the
basis of a conversation with them. See, e.g.,
[http://www.kaaj.com/psych/smorder.html](http://www.kaaj.com/psych/smorder.html)
(which I think is Mehrabian's own site) which says "Total Liking = 7% Verbal
Liking + 38% Vocal Liking + 55% Facial Liking" and adds: "Unless a
communicator is talking about their feelings or attitudes, these equations are
not applicable".

I'm frankly doubtful even about that much, but Mehrabian certainly never
claimed that any such equation holds for more "contentful" communication.

------
cia_plant
What's up with the cliff anyway? You're already asking me to take a much
higher level of risk and a much lower level of liquidity than I'd like in my
compensation, by giving me stock options. In addition to that you want me to
take on 100% of the risk of our working arrangement not working out, and in
fact you insist on giving yourself a strong incentive to fire me before the
first year is out? It seems ridiculously exploitative.

~~~
spacehome
I'm not sure of the details, but I think it's rooted in tax law -- that the
options are classified differently if they're exercised within a year of their
creation.

~~~
cbr
If that's the issue the options could vest monthly but just prohibit you from
exercising them for a year.

(not a lawyer)

The standard reason for the cliff is that at first an employee slows everyone
else down as they come up to speed, and then they start to help.

------
jfasi
This implies a somewhat one-way relationship between companies and their
engineers: engineers give their time and talents, and in return companies give
their money and equity. Under this system, why not be selective about who you
hire? If you want great work, you need to hire a great engineer.

In actuality, the truth is great people aren't found, they're made. The role
of a good leader isn't to squeeze great work out of his employees, but rather
to develop within them the capability to do great work. Applied to hiring,
this means having an understanding of the support and growth capabilities
within your organization, and finding candidates who have the most potential
to gain from it, rather than hiring those who are already well-developed.
Applied to hiring rockstars, this makes them even _more_ valuable: not only
would they be producing outstanding work on their own, they would actually be
improving the quality of the work their peers produce.

------
fidotron
There isn't so much a shortage of engineers as a shortage of people willing to
relocate to a stupidly expensive area and gamble what they have in the
process. From the outside, but as a reasonably regular visitor, the Bay Area
has lost the plot completely.

------
sheetjs
The one part of the problem that the author missed is salary. Offering a small
amount of equity is fine if you are offering an above-market salary, but it's
the combination of below-market salary and minimal equity that causes the
perceived crunch.

"You get what you pay for"

~~~
Rami114
Agreed, unless you have some extremely appealing concept going you're not
going to get interest with below-market salary offers even with average equity
offering. I'd put it more brusquely: "You pay peanuts, you get monkeys".

When we have jobs - infrequently mind you - at slightly below-market salary we
always offered a phased increase to slightly-above market salary over the 6
month trial period.

That being said, I'm seeing a lot of mentions of single week or single month
trials. Is this a US trend? Across the pond here, in the UK, I've certainly
not seen them.

~~~
TheCoelacanth
The norm in the US is no trial period. You start with the assumption that it's
going to be permanent and if it doesn't work out you get fired.

~~~
Rami114
Crazy, we're used to probation periods here with a short notice time, that
protects both sides. I assume you have to negotiate any notice period for
being fired, or do you simply get no statutory notice period?

~~~
TheCoelacanth
Usually, there is no notice required from either side except in the case of
mass layoffs (two weeks are expected out of politeness, but aren't legally
required). That can be changed by a contract, but that usually doesn't happen
for anyone but high-level executives.

------
jjoe
_What_ protects an equity-holder employee from being viciously or prematurely
fired prior to the exit or cash out event?

~~~
potatolicious
Nothing. See: Mark Pincus & Zynga.

~~~
gphil
There are clauses in some agreements to prevent this from happening.

Presumably, Zynga employees just didn't get these kind of rights.

------
coffeemug
In my experience non-engineering roles are just as difficult to fill.

You can easily find a non-technical hire if you don't know what you want or
don't care about quality. If you care about quality, you'll be stuck in the
same crunch. For example, the skill of being able to write without run-on
sentences eliminates 99.9% of the candidates in the pool, for _any_ role. Want
candidates who can write reasonably well? Hiring just got 100x more difficult.
In a modern environment, if you're non-technical and can't write well, what
_can_ you do?

~~~
UK-AL
Founder =P

------
Pxtl
I'm surprised that "get out of the valley" isn't an option for that. I mean,
there are a lot of cities that produce lots of talented developers that cost a
lot less than Silicon Valley rates.

~~~
compuguy
Honestly I don't get why there isn't more push to have startups in areas such
as the Washington DC metro area (for example).

~~~
danielweber
And if you really need to have "an office," then build a remote office in a
second-tier city and grab up all the candidates there. Fly people back and
forth occasionally.

------
mathattack
" _Finally, most founders are not willing to spend the time it takes to source
engineering candidates and convince them to come interview. You can 't
outsource this to a recruiter until the company is fairly well-established--
you have to do it yourself._"

This is very important. It needs to percolate into their immediate reports
too. I've seen high tech companies lose great candidates because the first
line managers were too busy to interview them right away. If the right talent
is available, you have to maket he time.

------
rqebmm
The interview process is still something that hasn't been solved. A lot of
companies make hiring decisions based almost entirely on how well someone does
non-coding work under extreme social pressure, which is about the worst
possible way to measure the prospects of a developer!

Personally I really like the interview process a previous empoyer used:
shortly before the interview starts we had them look over a roughly CS
102-level programming project, then we ask them to design the architecture on
a whiteboard while the interviewers ask questions/give guidance. What we're
really looking for here is:

a.) how do they handle the social aspect of working with a superior who will
often (gently) criticize your work and/or ask you to thoroughly explain why
you're doing what. b.) that they have enough chops to architect a simple
program.

If they can pass those test I'm confident they'll be an effective team member,
because at the end of the day all you really want is someone who is competent
enough to be useful, and fits into your culture/team. Everything else will
shake itself out. You don't need some "superstar/rockstar/ninja" (unless
you're solving a particularly hard domain-specific problem) so stop looking
for them and excluding everyone else.

Instead start building an effective team.

------
prathammittal
Talent crunch debate is an elusive one. No credible data is available and we
interpret to make ourselves feel good- sour grapes. One thing I would say (in
my capacity as having gone to high school in India) is that there are
thousands of great engineers (I'm talking about my friends from IIT and IIT)
who would die to work for a Dropbox or an Airbnb. I'm guessing its a similar
situation in S.America, Europe, China (?) etc.

Now, as far as I know, these companies don't hire in most of these countries.
But why don't they? I don't understand. Visa stuff is less of a concern
actually.. its been thrashed more than it deserves. Indian consulting
companies got like 30K H1Bs last year. 30,000 engineers moved from India to
the US. Surely, Dropbox can get 20 good ones. And your startup could probably
get a handful too.

These engineers grew up on hacker news - so culture is not the problem. They
are moving seven seas - so they work hard and aren't dicks. Their options in
India are limited - so the salary negotiation is less of a nightmare.

Not sure if there are any republicans here, so I'll not defend the "Indian
developer taking away American job" phenomenon. Hopefully, HNers get why
immigration makes sense.

We are trying at VenturePact.com to build a vetted international talent
marketplace. We launched a couple of weeks ago in Delhi and a few tech hubs in
India and got hundreds of apps from developers wanting to work in the valley
or NY. Well, many applications were not suitable BUT many were.

Would love to read what people think of hiring internationally. And what would
the preference be between getting them to work remotely vs relocate.

------
cratermoon
tl;dr:

There's no engineering crunch, just companies that don't want to pay market
rates.

The Free Market from startup/VC perspective: It works when we profit, but when
we want to hire cheap labor it's because there's not enough people.

~~~
CmonDev
Even so called "market rates" are actually unrealistically low.

[http://pando.com/2014/01/23/the-techtopus-how-silicon-
valley...](http://pando.com/2014/01/23/the-techtopus-how-silicon-valleys-most-
celebrated-ceos-conspired-to-drive-down-100000-tech-engineers-wages)

------
wpietri
My approach to equity was to offer a range. We'd offer base equity and salary
numbers, and then give them an ability to trade salary for equity. If I recall
rightly, they got a modestly better deal than investors did.

In doing that, it became clear that not everybody even wants more equity. That
was a little hard for us as founders to take, because we of course thought the
equity was awesome, and wanted engineers to feel a real sense of ownership.
But from the numbers, it was clear that some people would rather we sold more
equity to investors and just gave them the cash.

I get that. If you've been around the industry for a while, you can accumulate
quite a collection of expired startup lottery tickets. Landlords, mortgage-
holders, and kids' orthodontists don't take options; they take cash.

~~~
silverlake
Wouldn't it make more sense if I chose 0 equity and all salary, but then
bought equity with my excess salary? Now there's no vesting period. I get it
all now just like an investor.

~~~
wpietri
You'd be paying with post-tax dollars rather than pre-tax dollars, and you
have to be an accredited investor [1] for it to be legal.

If somebody really had said, "I want to bet my whole salary on the company,"
I'm sure we would have be happy to accommodate them with a deal that was fair.
There'd still be a vesting period, of course, for the same reason you don't
get your annual salary up front on the first day. The tricky question would be
the cliff, but I'm sure something could be worked out.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accredited_investor#U.S._criter...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accredited_investor#U.S._criteria)

~~~
randomdata
According to your link, you only need a $200K income to qualify, which you
could reasonably expect in the midst of a real engineer crunch.

------
frodopwns
There is no engineer crunch. Only wannabe founders who can't do anything but
talk big.

"Hey do you want to join my startup? We are reinventing analytics....again."

------
erichocean
As a teenager, I came to the conclusion that I would never get a job as a
result of an interview. I'd be even less likely to get past HR and get an
interview.

So I haven't interviewed for a single job for the last 18 years. Sometimes
people ask me for my resume; I don't have one.

What I did instead is take a problem I was interested in, solve it on paper,
and then approach a company to pay me to implement that solution for them
(along with an estimate of the cost). That has worked out really, really well
for me.

If you find that interviewers or HR aren't sizing you up correctly, this
approach might be an option. Businesses, when it comes to tech, mostly just
want problems solved. If you can do that, you'll get hired. Nothing shows you
can do something like bringing them the (on paper) solution, and offering to
built it.

------
ronaldx
Also, a cliff is very unattractive because we know you're motivated to fire us
before the cliff - probably even if we do a good job. Indeed, you openly admit
it.

~~~
danielweber
Does ERISA protect employees from that?

------
michaelt

      I frequently hear startups say [...] can't find 
      a single great candidate for an engineering role 
      no matter how hard they look. 
    

While I agree that offering better compensation is a wise move for individual
companies, if the market has 10 job openings and 9 engineers, regardless of
how much pay they offer one of the companies won't be able to fill the
opening.

Offering more money might fix hiring problems for one company, stopping one
person complaining, but to stop _all_ people complaining the only solution is
to increase the supply or reduce the demand.

(Increasing the supply doesn't have to mean immigration reform - it could mean
training or lowering hiring standards or a bunch of other things)

~~~
Phlarp
If the market has 10 openings and 9 engineers the companies should fight over
the 9 by increasing overall compensation, soon another intelligent hard
working individual will be sufficiently incentivised to join the industry
workforce.

~~~
michaelt
Sure, but if you want to hire someone with nonzero industry experience, your
options are more limited :) this is what I mean when I say companies will have
to lower their standards - inexperienced people into experienced-person
positions, people who've been coding since they were 18 instead of people
who've been coding since they were 10, people without university degrees
instead of with them, and so on.

No amount of demand can create people with two years of experience in less
than two years, or people with four-year degrees in less than four years.

~~~
danielweber
You can also stop engineers from leaving for finance.

------
kreek
"For most startups in the bay area"... time to move or be open to remote
developers.

------
j_baker
> In fact, probably less than 5% of the best hackers are even in the United
> States.

Startups clearly need to be basing more of their decisions on unfounded
conjectures. I have to say that startups seem to have unreasonable
expectations of what kinds of programmers they can hire. We have plenty of
viable hackers in the US, but startups don't want to hire them because they're
not the next Knuth or they're "not a good cultural fit".

[http://www.businessinsider.com/the-real-truth-about-the-
stem...](http://www.businessinsider.com/the-real-truth-about-the-stem-
shortage-that-americans-dont-want-to-hear-2013-5)

~~~
fredgrott
I would state that MAster with no time limit is not the same as those who cod
under time limits..not knocking Knuth contributions but the requirements are
somewhat different.

~~~
GFK_of_xmaspast
I'd rather have one Don Knuth than a hundred ninja rock stars.

~~~
jfb
BURNS

This is a thousand monkeys working at a thousand typewriters. Soon, they'll
have written the greatest novel known to mankind. (reads one of the
typewriters) "It was the best of times, it was the blurst of times"?! you
stupid monkey! (monkey screeches)

------
Matt_Mickiewicz
"Third, if you’re going to recruit outside of your network (usually a mistake,
but sometimes there are truly no other options), focus on recruiting outside
of the valley. There are great hackers all over the country, and many of them
can be talked into moving to the valley."

UPVOTE!! I'm shocked at how many companies are unwilling to pay for a $500
Southwest ticket to fly someone in for a day to interview from Texas or
Georgia... relocation costs are easily offset by a slightly lower salary, and
the person you're interviewing is unlikely to have 4 or 5 paper offers in
hand.

------
puppetmaster3
It's bogus. There is no shortage of engineers. But there are many badly
managed corps that only H1 would work at.

------
chris_mahan
"Great hackers also want the opportunity to work with really smart people and
the opportunity to work on interesting problems, and the nature of mission-
oriented companies is such that they usually end up offering these as well."

Uh, I don't care if it's "saving the world and the whales" or "enhancing legal
resolution outcomes through analytics". I care that I am granted enough
latitude to design and implement a good solution, instead of being handed a
software toolbox and told to "bang on nails" all day.

------
timedoctor
We find it moderately difficult, but definitely possible to find great people.
The secret is NOT looking in Silicon valley and the bay area where thousands
of extremely well funded companies are looking for talented developers.

Totally agree with the last sentiments that if you're in the bay area why
should you ONLY considering hiring in the same area? It shocks me that
technology companies can be so parochial.

You can hire across the entire US, Canada is just nearby and then there is ...
the rest of the planet!

------
lkrubner
Regarding this:

"Sometimes this difficulty is self-inflicted."

I want to emphasize how strong this point is. In most ways, the computer
programming industry is a shrinking industry in the USA. There are less
computer programming jobs in the USA than there were 20 years ago.

Stats from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (USA):

[http://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-
technology/c...](http://www.bls.gov/ooh/computer-and-information-
technology/computer-programmers.htm)

1990 Number of Jobs 565,000

2010 Number of Jobs 363,100

2012 Number of Jobs 343,700

There is a tiny subset of the industry that is growing, and we associate these
with the startups in San Francisco and New York. But so far these startups
have not created enough jobs to offset the jobs lost due to other factors.

This suggests that there must be a vast reservoir or programmers who would
like programming jobs, but they can't work as programmers because the jobs
have disappeared.

If the numbers were smaller, you could argue that the loss of jobs was due to
inaccuracies in the way Bureau of Labor gathers statistics. But the drop from
565,000 jobs to 343,700 is too large to be a spurious blip.

This is a shrinking industry. Computer programming jobs are tied to
manufacturing so as manufacturing leaves the USA, so to do the computer
programming jobs. Don't get caught up in the hype about startups: look at the
actual numbers. The government tracks these jobs. The numbers are shrinking.

Especially worth a look:

[http://americawhatwentwrong.org/story/programming-jobs-
fall/](http://americawhatwentwrong.org/story/programming-jobs-fall/)

"In its 1990 Occupational Outlook Handbook, the U.S. Department of Labor was
especially bullish: “The need for programmers will increase as businesses,
government, schools and scientific organizations seek new applications for
computers and improvements to the software already in use [and] further
automation . . . will drive the growth of programmer employment.” The report
predicted that the greatest demand would be for programmers with four years of
college who would earn above-average salaries.

When Labor made these projections in 1990, there were 565,000 computer
programmers. With computer usage expanding, the department predicted that
“employment of programmers is expected to grow much faster than the average
for all occupations through the year 2005 . . .”

It didn’t. Employment fluctuated in the years following the report, then
settled into a slow downward pattern after 2000. By 2002, the number of
programmers had slipped to 499,000. That was down 12 percent–not up–from 1990.
Nonetheless, the Labor Department was still optimistic that the field would
create jobs–not at the robust rate the agency had predicted, but at least at
the same rate as the economy as a whole.

Wrong again. By 2006, with the actual number of programming jobs continuing to
decline, even that illusion couldn’t be maintained. With the number of jobs
falling to 435,000, or 130,000 fewer than in 1990, Labor finally acknowledged
that jobs in computer programming were “expected to decline slowly.” "

~~~
patio11
You and/or your sources are not successfully interpreting the BLS data. You
have overlooked the reorganization of the SOC.

Take a look at the computer occupations major grouping (which, n.b., does not
include many people who you and I think of as programmers).

Here it is in 2000:
[http://www.bls.gov/soc/2000/soc_c0a0.htm](http://www.bls.gov/soc/2000/soc_c0a0.htm)

Here it is in 2010:
[http://www.bls.gov/soc/2010/soc150000.htm](http://www.bls.gov/soc/2010/soc150000.htm)

Note the addition of the Software Developers (Applications), Software
Developers (Systems), and Web Programmers. This resulted from a
recategorization of programmers and Computer System Engineers. Also, web
programmers was simply disaggregated from Programmers generally.

I'll save you looking up the numbers: from memory, there are about 2 million
of them. You can treat some portion of them as being "poached" from the
computer programming category. Most are new to the field since 1990. Net
employment across the previous and successor categories is up, by several
hundred thousand jobs.

Your contention that the US has lost programming jobs flies in the face of
material reality.

------
_random_
There is a gold crunch as well - I can't find 999% gold at 1$ per kg.

~~~
whatthefox
Well said! If this doesn't convey the message I don't know what will.

Most of the "Founders" are nothing but facades that just want to make money in
the Tech world. They don't give a damn about technology or improving the
world.

------
arbuge
Recruiting good web developers is tough, no question, but I remember trying to
recruit good analog IC design engineers at my previous startup. That made
hiring developers look like a cakewalk in comparison. There were maybe 100-200
worldwide who fit the bill, all of whom were already happily employed at very
comfortable jobs.

~~~
vonmoltke
> I remember trying to recruit good analog IC design engineers at my previous
> startup ... There were maybe 100-200 worldwide who fit the bill

You have atrociously high standards for "good" if that is the size of your
pool.

~~~
arbuge
Nope.

------
w_t_payne
Or, y'know, maybe locate outside of the Valley?

------
pistle
>"Don't hire outside your network."

If nobody in your network has a track record of results, become a sycophant?
What if all the hackers in your network are US as well? You got less than a 5%
chance of a hope to do anything according to Altman.

~~~
ben336
...Thats not how percentages work :)

------
randunel
As a non-us engineer, I've had 2 visa applications denied. I guess Europe wins
:D

------
RogerL
I would like to share how inhuman a lot of the interview processes are. Some
examples: * recruiter says a startup is interested, introduces me to the HR
person via email. I get a 2 sentence email from HR, telling me that I have to
schedule a phone technical interview in the next day or two, they need to
onboard FAST.

Okay, I don't know what the job is, who the client is, and the last thing I
want to do is be grilled over the phone. I'm certainly uninterested in your
time crunch and am not going to rearrange my life to meet your schedule
requirements (there were narrow stipulations on acceptable times).

* Talk with a company, and explain that I don't do whiteboard interviewing. Oh, a session is no problem, but the interview has to be as much letting me interview and question you. 'No problem, we just want to talk and see where you'll fit in'.

Come the day, and I barely get a 'hi', just nonstop whiteboard coding in an
intense environment. Took the whole day off for that time waste. Two of the
sessions had me solve essentially the identical problem - I waste my day, they
don't take 5 minutes to plan out what I'll be asked. Then they call me back,
and tell me I have to come in for another series a day later, which was
entirely unexpected, and not communicated to me prior to agreeing to
interview. And if my requests for how the interview is conducted can't be
honored, fine, tell me, and either I'll change my mind or decide not to waste
a day taken from work. The cap to all of that was the 'shoot the messenger'
emails when I said I was not accepting due to how this all went down (and oh,
I didn't respond quickly enough to that email, meaning it took me a few hours,
so more grief for that).

* Just general, insistent demands as if I have nothing to do but interview with your company. If you have your resume out there, all you do is field phone calls and emails. I'm not going to pursue anything without knowing quite a bit about the job because I don't have to. There is always going to be better, low hanging fruit - cold emails with very accurate, detailed descriptions of a wickedly cool start up, recruiters that actually get to know your skill sets and desires, and so on.

* No exposure to what the work will be like. It's so secret they can't tell you, or there is a 'variety of work', or whatever. No work environment tour. No discussion of compensation, work hours, and so on until you've wasted a day or more in interviews.

* 'Go and study this book for a month, and then apply'. Um, I'm 47 and have a very successful career of inventions and products. Surely you don't have to quiz me on red-black tree implementation to access my abilities. If I need to know that, I'll open the book and learn it.

It was, by and large, very unpleasant. Perhaps it is not the best proxy, but I
go in assuming the interview process is the time you are trying to impress and
woo me the most, and judge you on that.

------
rgarcia
"If someone performs and earns their grant over four years, they are likely to
increase the value of the company far more than the 1% or whatever you give
them."

This argument seems flawed. If I think someone is going to double the value of
my company, should I be comfortable giving them up to 100% equity? Put another
way: percentage growth of your company from an early stage to some point in
the future most often exceeds 100%.

~~~
chime
You need to add a factor for risk in there. If there is a 10% chance that they
will double the value of your company, you can give them 5%. If there is a
100% chance that they will double the value of your company, you can give them
50% and make them a co-founder. Think in terms of marginal utility. Keep
giving equity until it no longer raises your expected value.

------
strlen
There are two unmentioned issues in regards to stock grants and hiring:

1) Information asymmetry or just plain symmetric lack of information in
regards to stock grants.

2) The price of a home in a decent school district within a "reasonable" (< 1
hour each way, i.e., no more than 2 hours a day total) commute to any cluster
of software companies in Bay Area (whether SOMA, Peninsula, or South Bay).

The two are closely related. When startups are competing for people against
Google or any of the young public (or pre-IPO) technology companies, the issue
at stake isn't salary (post series-A, startups may pay a slightly below market
salary, but not an egregiously low one) but RSUs ("restricted stock units" or
essentially outright stock grants: while these are treated as income for the
purpose of taxation, there's also no strike price and AMT trap to worry
about).

The reasons why these grants (which are generally very far from the "retire on
a yacht category") matter is that their ball-park value is known, they're
often refreshed as part of the performance review cycle (as opposed to fixed
during offer negotiation time), and if you plan on staying in Bay Area and
having kids, you're relying upon them to either afford a house in a decent
school district and with a reasonable commute, or to afford private school
tuition.

Changing grant tactics can help with information asymmetry problem
(transparency about finances and valuation is nowadays the rule rather than
exception in early stage companies), but they can't help with mutual lack of
information: neither the founders nor the investors know with certainty a
general ballpark figure of what the value of the company price will be at a
liquidity event, or if there will be a liquidity event in the first place.

What this means is that unless housing problems in Bay Area are addressed, in
addition to the already well discussed negative externalities, startups will
have an increasingly harder time hiring engineers that haven't yet experienced
a liquidity event or spent four or more years at bigger companies. They would
love to join a start-up, but not at the cost of their (future or existing)
children's education.

\---

Unrelated to the above points, this paragraph is also as important as it
should be obvious:

"Finally, most founders are not willing to spend the time it takes to source
engineering candidates and convince them to come interview. You can't
outsource this to a recruiter until the company is fairly well-established--
you have to do it yourself."

If I receive a message from an external recruiter, it's hard to tell whether
they really reasonably believe there's a good match between my skills and
interest and the company, or if they're just employing a shotgun approach. I
usually disregard these messages, even when I may be open to a new
opportunity. On the other hand, if I receive a message from a founder or a
tech lead, I try to reply even if (as, e.g., now) I'm not interested in
interviewing: at the very least, it's likely they did actually mean to
approach me specifically (not just anyone who has "Hadoop" in their profile),
and I've an obligation to let them know that I'm not available at the moment
as not to string them along.

\---

Finally, to underscore something else said in the article, in general, best
way to hire good people, is to work on something good people enjoy working on,
whether it's a greater mission or a good technical challenge. If neither of
the two is there, the most straight forward startup recruiting pitch -- "come
work on something cool with other smart people" \-- fails.

------
zallarak
Excellent essay. This really nails what I'd want in a dream job; knowing my
effort influences my payout (via legitimately sized equity grants) and working
on a mission I empathize with. Best article I've read in a while on hiring.

------
EGreg
Why not use oDesk and overseas developers? Today's teams communicate using
remote tools even when in cubicles next door. Why severely limit yourself
geographically in your search?

------
puppetmaster3
Would you say there's not a shortage of lawyers, and why is that?

~~~
PeterisP
There's an overproduction of lawyers in USA, as evidenced by falling entry-
level wages in that area and growing rate of law school graduates who are
unpaid interns, unemployed or work less-than-their-education jobs.

~~~
puppetmaster3
That sounds like propaganda.

I am paying a lawyer in SV $600 /hr. Show me a link where I can get one for
$65?

I'll also argue that software engineers train harder and maintain more than
lawyers. If the market worked, the wages would raise till the supply catches
up. But the market appears to be manipulated.

------
pastProlog
The beautiful girl crunch

For most guys in the bay area, the beautiful girl crunch is a bigger problem
than the Series A crunch (this somewhat applies to designers as well). The
difference in difficulty between dating a beautiful girl and an unattractive
one is remarkable--I frequently hear guys say that for unattractive girls they
can find multiple great candidates without really looking but can't find a
single beautiful girl for a dating role no matter how hard they look.

First, of all the canonical terrible advice advisors give, being cheap is
among the worst. I have never seen a hardup guy regret being generous.

For most beautiful girls, this is as much about fairness and feeling valued as
it is about the money. And of course, if girls are going to turn down the
certainty of dating a handsome, confident sales guy, they should get a reward
for taking that risk.

If you’re going to look outside of your network of friends from your Defense
of the Ancients guild (usually a mistake, but sometimes there are truly no
other options), focus on recruiting girls outside of the valley.

Finally, most engineers are not willing to spend the time it takes to develop
a normal social life with regular non-technical people whereas they might
develop normal personality traits and meet someone nice. You can't outsource
this though--you have to do it yourself.

Footnote: * Every time someone from the government asks me what they can do to
help hard-up engineers, I always say a version of "The only thing you need to
do is fix immigration for beautiful girls." We need more beautiful,
financially desperate girls from third world countries whose standards are not
as high as American ones.

~~~
YokoZar
I once (sarcastically) argued in a student newspaper that attractive people
should be favored in college admissions, since students would much rather
share a campus with more attractive people. To me it made more sense in terms
of promoting the desirability of attending the school than a whole lot of
existing practices, such as favoring athletes or the children of alumni.

------
joesmo
Pay 20% or more above the so called market rate and you'll sew there is no
crunch. It's that easy.

------
crassus
Double the equity. 9 month vesting cliff. Market salary.

