The unfortunate reality is that you're worth the same as what the next qualified person is willing to accept.

Compensation is determined by the local cost of labor: if a competing candidate is living in North Dakota and willing to accept 30% less, then that's what they'll pay.

It's a sad state of affairs. There are far more resources available these days to combat the information asymmetry that drives the "financial planning" industry, but it's not nearly enough to help the people who actually NEED it.

I began my career in private wealth management (minimum $5M investable assets).

I ditched that to try to help real people...joined a brokerage where I discovered sales targets still required $250K, at the very least, in investable assets (this excludes include home and any assets that cannot be held by the brokerage, so the net worth of these people was usually $500K+).

I finally gave up and attempted to run a business on a different fee model to educate lower/lower-middle class people on their finances. The Great Recession and my youthful idealism & naivete destroyed that.

Wow, quite an experience. I'm curious: how did those rich people use your schizophrenic mother in tax avoidance scheme?

This exactly. It's a whole different scale.

This reminds of a typical visit to the doctor.

The nurse enters the room, asks me why I'm there and types the answers into EMR. She leaves...

The doctor walks in and says "so, what brings you in today?"

It's either a huge redundancy or a useful way of sending off your message to join millions of others, with the goal of training the system to improve and speed up the automated service.

You've worked at 11 startups?! How long have you been in the industry?

~20 years, several of those startups barely managed to survive a year. I started at a more traditional tech company and got recruited to a startup after a couple of years.

Thanks for sharing. I was curious and checked the trend too:

Comments: May 2018 (1,199), 2019 (1,018), 2020 (697)

Comments: June 2018 (911), 2019 (799), 2020 (671)

Comments: July 2018 (857), 2019 (912), 2020 (622)

The hiring environment is a mess.

For example, big tech (FANG etc) is vacuuming up folks everywhere from startups to those hit hard like Uber, Lyft, and Airbnb.

The top career priority in times of uncertainty is stability. So you have not just those laid off from the those companies, but those still employed and nervous, who are eyeing and applying to big tech. Startups that survive and grow now and after will have the advantage of less business competition, but will see a drop in candidates who will need more time to re-adjust to risk.

You listed the roles as Onsite/Remote - can you expand on your plans here? Thanks!

Thanks for your clarification.

Unfortunately, I still feel a case-by-case approach leaves too much uncertainty and risk for the employer & candidate. And I'm not speaking to only you - your job post/comment just happens to exemplify a huge challenge facing countless companies during Covid!

So, for example: what would your hiring decision be if you interview the perfect candidate...who will 100% not relocate to LA?

I think their answer was fair.

From my perspective, in their shoes.. it wouldn't just be seniority/skill/desire to hire. I'd also try to gauge the person in question.

An example...

For years I've done, and supported, remote. One of my clients had an issue with an employee working remote. They simply wanted raw info on what was happening, why this employee had 'degraded' performance wise.

So during a normal maintenance trip.. they asked me to keep my eyes open. I did, and things were immediately clear. The 'remote work' space of this employee, was strewn with toys, had a crib in it, and while we were in our meeting, had 10+ interruptions from spouse, mother-in-law, and kids.

In other words, how do you get any real work done, when you're literally watching the kids, and pestered every 5 minutes? Bear in mind, this level of interruption was happening when we were in a meeting. Imagine the scenario, when no one was visiting?

One of the most essential things in making remote "work", is an understanding by others in the remote location. Just because you can see a person, does not mean they are available to be talked to, or to do chores, or 'watch the kids'... especially pre-schoolers.

So why all the above blather?

Well, I'd suspect they'd be trying to figure out what one's short term (during covid) and long term remote work environment would be like.

If you have a segregated, separate work space at home, if your SO and kids know to "leave you alone!" when at "work", if you don't think working from home means "I can help out at home, while working"...

Well, then I'd probably be OK with more perm remote work.

That's just my 2 cents, and probably why there are no specifics. Variability like this, is what makes you hire an employee, or not.

Interesting.

What I'm most curious about is the Hiring Manager's POV. Do they, in fact, even want FAANG engineers?

Money aside for a moment, do startups require too much of a transition in culture (small, fast & unpredictable) or skills (more generalist & unsiloed) for FAANG engineers to perform successfully?

I used to work for a technical recruiting platform. I can say that anecdotally, most startups are happy to have a FAANG engineer in their pipeline. If an engineer has the talent level for FAANG, and they want what comes with a startup role, they will generally work out. There might be some cultural ramp up, but it's almost always navigable.

The most common issue I saw around FAANG engineers and startups was actually retention (which is more broadly an issue throughout engineering). Owning a substantial piece of a company is an exciting thought when you first join, but after a year and a half of making 60% of your old salary, in which the startup has had enough ups and downs to make you question whether this equity will ever actually be worth anything, moving on can be very attractive.

I don't know about those points.

I remember a well publicized story that talked about a startup trying to poach a google engineer (they offered him $1M but he turned it down because Google was paying $3M). So I guess some startups want them depending on the skillset or reputation.

Funny because you poach the Google engineer, and probably they are hamstrung because the startup doesn't have Google's infrastructure. E.g. you are stuck with Kubernetes, not whatever Google now uses. I could understand maybe Microsoft poaching for the long term brain dump value.

I think they were headhunting him because he had a reputation for being excellent in a technology that wasn't specific to Google. He definitely wasn't just an average employee (Google was paying $3M/yr!).