

Ask HN: How much do you pay software engineers? - baconface

What type of compensation is fair for a technical first hire?<p>What about subsequent technical hires?<p>Please give a range.
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steventruong
1\. It depends heavily on location.

2\. It depends on what stage the company is at. Have you raised capital or not
(and do you intend to) or are you planning on scaling without capital. Equity,
if any, is directly tied to this which can influence pay.

3\. Depends on the experience.

Without knowing the above factors, the range can be anywhere between $20k and
$250k (albeit, the $250k side is usually not going to happen)

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dasil003
This totally depends on the location. Within the US it seems somewhat tied to
cost of living, but across the pond in Europe they pay significantly less even
when rents are much higher (I'm looking at you London).

Anywhere from $30,000 to $70,000 for someone fresh out of school might be
normal. For 10 years experience the range could be $50,000 to $250,000.

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spooneybarger
in nyc, 30,000 a year will get you an untrained monkey with no skills at
all... or someone with no concept at all of what they can get paid.

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kls
Right I would say that is the same for most of the US. If I had to venture to
guess, I would imagine the national average for entry level is around 50-60k
and senior developers are north of 100k in most major metros.

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pbreit
In the Bay Area, pre-funded: $0-30k; seed-funded: $30-70k; series A: $60-140k.
All: plus equity.

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baconface
What are the equity ranges for seed and series A? I've heard up to 4% for
seed, but not sure if that was correlated with a high-end salary or not.

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donniefitz2
This kind of question tends to be a bit taboo.

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dazzer
That's a taboo I don't understand.

What's wrong with talking about what you earn? I can understand if it was
pride/ego preventing people from talking about it. But from the workers'
perspective wouldn't it be better to know what the going rates are to make
sure you aren't getting ripped off for your work.

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rawsyntax
It's more about negotiation tactics than being taboo. Employers don't list
salaries on job ads.

