
Analyzing AngelList Job Postings, Part 2: Salary and Equity Benchmarks - lpolovets
http://codingvc.com/analyzing-angellist-job-postings-part-2-salary-and-equity-benchmarks
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jacalata
I recently interviewed at a startup that also happened to have a job posting
on AngelList at the time, and the salary/equity offer they gave me was
actually below the range proposed on the AngelList posting (I hadn't applied
through that posting). When I brought this up their HR contact attempted to
explain that the posting was meant to be for a Senior Engineer, which I'm
not...presumably hoping I hadn't noticed that they had a separate posting up
with an even higher salary range titled "Senior Engineer". I declined their
offer, but the negotiation was a very valuable learning experience (as in, I
did everything wrong starting by being the first one to give a number, and
learned not to do that!)

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elmyraduff
I read a lot of salary-related articles and discussions(due to my startup) and
I've seen many examples like yours. This is nothing other than a click-bait
scam. It is very unfortunate. You think upfront-listed salaries are a way of
eliminate unmet expectations during the interview process. And all you get is
companies listing high salaries to attract the top talent and then not
honoring the promise.

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7Figures2Commas
Don't be so negative. They'll pay you $1xx,000/year...once they raise funding
in 3 months.

In all seriousness, I'm not sure why so many people assume that the salaries
posted on AngelList should be taken at face value. With minimal due diligence,
it's clear that a lot of the startups are unlikely to have enough funding or
traction (in the form of revenue) to support the salaries that they purport to
be offering. As you pointed out, they're just trying to get warm bodies
through the door and hoping a few of them will drink the kool-aid.

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x0x0
Getting someone in the door by lying to them doesn't seem like good round on
which to start a relationship. Unless you're desperate, it's stupid to accept
an offer where one party started the negotiation by misleading you.

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optimiz3
If you're a halfway decent engineer, you can make north of 180k/yr at
Google/MSFT/Facebook. You can also do this in a market like Seattle where
there is no income tax.

Serious question, who in their right mind would take a paltry 1.5% equity and
<= 130k/yr for these salary numbers at the level of talent these startups are
seeking?

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scarmig
Serious question: is 180k base now actually the going rate at G/MS/FB for a
mid-career engineer?

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steven777400
I have 10-15 years of experience and my base offer from MSFT (Bellevue) was
$110k/year.

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smm2000
You were low-balled or have particularly shitty resume. 110k is offer for new
grads. The right approach to maximizing offer is to get 5-6 offers, do bidding
war between companies you do not want to work for and then ask the company you
want to work for to match the highest offer.

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tptacek
Microsoft semi-(in)famously had a strategy of paying 70% of market salary.

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daniellorenc
When I was at Microsoft ~3 years ago, the strategy was to pay at the 70th
percentile of market salaries, not pay 70% of the current market salary.

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tptacek
Sorry, you're right, 70th percentile. My point though is just that he may not
have been lowballed deliberately.

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arenaninja
A question I genuinely have is whether these figures are something to go by or
only relevant if you're in SF/SV, and I suspect it's the latter. It would be
nice to work out a scale to more-or-less approximate how far these numbers
take you in other cities (though I suppose you could just use a cost-of-living
calculator, but there are other considerations in tech IMO).

But even adjusting for the cost of living, I'm glad I see figures like this
because it shows how ridiculous some offers are. I got an invitation to apply
in Los Angeles last week for webdev, with the bottom set at $40k and the max
set at $70k

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lpolovets
(I'm the post's author.)

This analysis is not hard to do for a specific job. If you're looking at a job
at a 10-person startup in LA, go to AngelList and look up job postings at 5-10
other LA startups that are a similar size. You'll get a great sense of what a
typical offer looks like, and then you can compare that to your own offer.

~~~
arenaninja
Hey, thanks! I was about to start fishing for the data myself, I thought it
might come from some API. Definitely some interesting insights, particularly
from your previous submission on the same topic (which sadly didn't make front
page), that shows the declining popularity of PHP among startups. Definitely
going to slice the data myself, thanks!

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angersock
God _damn_ it do I hate this city sometimes. Considering stapling this to the
face of the next person in Houston that bitches about not being able to find
engineering talent.

EDIT:

I lost two really good potential hires once they passed the tech interview and
then we decided we couldn't pay them...which is fine initially, but if we
can't shed that mindset when our next round closes, I will be sad (and likely
available).

If only there was some kind of proxy for salaries, some sort of thing we could
offer in lieu of payment to potential employees, some kind of asset whose
ownership we could offer with the expectation it'd be worth more later. Man,
what a thing that could be.

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vonmoltke
> Considering stapling this to the face of the next person in Houston that
> bitches about not being able to find engineering talent.

What kind of work do you do? I work for a non-enterprise Java shop (NLP) up in
Dallas. We have trouble finding people worth interviewing, but since I started
2.5 years ago have only had one offer extended and rejected.

EDIT: On the flip side, I have had major trouble trying to get places in
Dallas, Austin, and Houston to even talk to me when I have been looking. It
took me two years to get what I have now, and my testing of the market
recently has been met with silence.

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danielweber
I'm looking for a full-time position, in/from a top-20 (but not top-5) city,
and experience the complete fuckup of software recruiting weekly.

Voodoo and witchcraft. That's the state of the art in software interviewing.

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ambrood
Can the self reported figures by companies on angel list really be trusted?
From personal experience companies (YC backed no less) inflate the equity
offering on angel list!

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melvinmt
" If the founder gives away 10% more than they should to the first 10
employees, then that's 10% less that's available for fundraising and future
equity grants -- and that might break the company."

This is not how stocks work. Exceptions aside, every previous round gets
diluted by the next round where the 10% eventually becomes 1%. Also, not every
employee will stay on for 4 years to vest their stock options completely.

You do have the risk to burn through your allocated employee stock option pool
if you're too generous (this is the point after which the investors and
founders start to dilute their shares).

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bjoernlasseh
We are currently doing a survey to get more detailed data on Salaries for
engineers & co. If you have a few minutes please help and contribute :)!
[http://blog.startupcompass.co/](http://blog.startupcompass.co/)

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danielweber
You want me to fill out a survey about my salary, using my work email, and
will then send the results to my work email.

I'm missing something.

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bjoernlasseh
lol, great point - fixed that

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msoad
Startup jobs after they raise series A are more of a fraud than a realistic
job positing.

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rgovind
Can you please elaborate on this?

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owyn
Not the original commenter, but I'd say... Imagine you've been given some VC
and you are in the Bay Area and you have to compete for hiring with large
established/stable companies, and you only have a year or two of runway to
build your product. You're going to pay well for good engineers. So this
creates an artificially inflated market for engineering talent that doesn't
necessarily translate to other areas or countries that don't have the same
injection of VC capital (you could also call this "desperation" or a "labor
friendly" market). There are definitely enough engineers here who are willing
to take the gamble of salary vs equity to keep the startup companies
bootstrapping, but increasingly I've met more people who want salary and
stability, and that may be due to the increasing expense of living in this
place. So, the spiral continues.

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Blackthorn
I remember taking a glance at AngelList about a month ago and having a good
laugh at how badly lowballed all of the salaries on it were. Hope they get
better in the future.

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eli
AngelList weirdly doesn't let you list a job that offers zero equity, so any
jobs in the minimum range might actually be pure salary.

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biggerbox
Does anyone know what typical equity grants translate into on average. I.E. 1%
typically will payout in the range of y to z, etc.

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coldcode
The question I find more interesting is what % of people in the early stages
mentioned here ever collect on their equity?

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walshemj
You would need to measure that against what stock options are worth at a big
stable company FTSE 100 DOW or S&P 500

For example in the UK BT's latest 5 year share save returned over £70k tax
free - and that is open to every one.

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joshkpeterson
FWIW, Robert Half's salary calculator for Seattle gives the following salary
hierarchy (their job titles, not mine):

Web Designer < Web Developer < Software Developer < Software Engineer

There is some overlap between Software Dev & Eng with PM's and Senior Web Dev.

[http://www.roberthalf.com/technology/it-salary-
center?lobId=...](http://www.roberthalf.com/technology/it-salary-
center?lobId=roberthalftechnology)

