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Ask HN: How to determine my value as an employee?
2 points by jackson1442 on Feb 3, 2021 | hide | past | favorite | 2 comments
Hey all-

I'm currently working as a consultant for a company, so I'm working hourly as an external contractor on a single project. Had a chat with my boss today (it's a small company so he also happens to be the CEO) and he mentioned that he was interested in offering me an internal position as a formal employee (currently I'm working as a contractor, 1099-NEC, all that fun stuff).

With this comes renegotiation and I am completely out of my depth. I'm a full-time college student, so I don't have any credentials to wave around. My boss mentioned that he considers me "intermediate" when he was talking about potentially hiring on more Junior SEs.

This is all very early in the process. I don't have a formal offer, and this was more a discussion of my future at the company than an interview or offer or anything; I just want to make sure I'm ready when the time comes.

So with all that, how exactly do you determine what you consider your value to be?




You are suffering under the common delusion that you should be paid according to your value. Employees are labor and are paid as such. In tech companies that might involve equity but primarily you are the labor. In capitalist society, labor is paid at a market rate vs other equivalent labor, not by value.

Your earning power is thus determined by what the next company is willing to offer. Again, this is disconnected from value.

You can see prevailing wages for established companies at levels.fyi . I've no idea how big "small" is but in silicon valley, middle stage startups pretty consistently pay about $175-$225k plus equity.


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