Honest question: Why does every blog post that talks about working with a startup, always pick Facebook and Google for the comparison?
Both these companies are extreme outliers (probably in the history of business!). Their outsized pay comes from their outsized profits, which comes from selling your data. I find it very ironic, that these very same people who diss startups love dissing Google and FB as being evil, but somehow when it comes salary packages they're viewed as holy institutions.
Google and FB hire very selectively, and even if you're truly qualified they may not actually have a position open for you. And most critically 99+% of engineers (including the ones in HN) probably won't make the cut for whatever reason.
Why not compare with traditional megacorps (of which there are literally (fortune) 500s of them (every company is a tech company now ;) ) like IBM, Oracle, SAP, etc? This group is far more representative of where most engineers would actually end up and hence a better comparison against startups.
Then you'd realize that startup packages don't seem that bad - or rather you're making a tradeoff between not having to deal with corporate bullshit or an extra 30K in stock grants.
Also on another note - startups are a wide spectrum (more so than megacorps). You have 3-5 person starting up startups to series D unicorn startups. Broad sweeping blanket statements comparing startups as if they're a single entity don't help too much.
Those places (IBM, Oracle, etc.) also tend to pay much better than startups, have better equity packages, and more room to learn things. Just look at angel.co. It's common to see everything from "no salary" to "$90k", plus equity, in the listings for Bay Area startups. It's much more rare to see salaries above about $150k. These days working for a startup doesn't make any sense at all, for any reason, unless you're literally a founder (with double-digit equity).
^Thanks for the comments. As I said there is a spectrum of startups. You have to make your own judgement - especially if you're joining 3-5 person startups without any funding. But that said the median Valley-based Series A/B/C startup would probably offer a competitive package or atleast they'll be upfront about it and not waste your time.
On a side note - any tom, dick and harry can create a angel.co profile. I would discount 90% of them there. Basic due diligence - crunchable, SEC filings (on funding), any press articles, digging into founders' linkedin profiles should help you separate the wheat from the chaff.
Even "B tier" tech companies such as finance firms, travel firms (booking.com, expedia) pay significantly better. Their stock is also worth something and will continue to be worth something.
Facebook and Google are so big they pretty much set the standard for what people talk about. You might prefer to say, I dunno, AirBnB, but that detracts from the point people are trying to make, which is that a bigger de-risked company is better on financial terms.
Both these companies are extreme outliers (probably in the history of business!). Their outsized pay comes from their outsized profits, which comes from selling your data. I find it very ironic, that these very same people who diss startups love dissing Google and FB as being evil, but somehow when it comes salary packages they're viewed as holy institutions.
Google and FB hire very selectively, and even if you're truly qualified they may not actually have a position open for you. And most critically 99+% of engineers (including the ones in HN) probably won't make the cut for whatever reason.
Why not compare with traditional megacorps (of which there are literally (fortune) 500s of them (every company is a tech company now ;) ) like IBM, Oracle, SAP, etc? This group is far more representative of where most engineers would actually end up and hence a better comparison against startups.
Then you'd realize that startup packages don't seem that bad - or rather you're making a tradeoff between not having to deal with corporate bullshit or an extra 30K in stock grants.
Also on another note - startups are a wide spectrum (more so than megacorps). You have 3-5 person starting up startups to series D unicorn startups. Broad sweeping blanket statements comparing startups as if they're a single entity don't help too much.