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Ask HN: Average start-up salary & equity (Silicon Valley)?

20 points by mikeburrelljr ↗ HN
Not being from California, help educate a mid-westerner on tech start-ups in San Francisco and the surrounding areas.

What can an experienced nerd earn (in $ and equity) in the following positions?

  - Back-end developer

  - Front-end developer

  - Project manager

2 comments

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mikeburrelljr
I would assume there is a greater emphasis placed on equity, but how much?

(The typical "pay is competitive and the equity is generous" line in most ads isn't very descriptive.)

Thanks in advance for the start-up 101 lesson!

lsc
depends, largely, on what you are worth at an established company.

If you have good experience, and you are going to work for a startup with milions in investment, expect a small fraction of a percent of the company (expect to be looked at funny when you ask for information that will allow you to figure out what percentage of the company you are getting rather than a number of shares, but that's what matters. I can have a billion shares, if I want, in a company that isn't worth anything at all.) But, expect around what you'd get as a valley engineer working for an established company; $100K+ per year base salary, depending on location and experience, of course.

Really, if you have good experience and job prospects, You probably don't want to be an employee of a startup without money. If you have good job prospects, insist on a reasonable salary /or/ become a founder. Being an employee rarely results in enough stock options to make a significantly below-market salary worth it.