I'm a startup founder and I'd like to understand this:
Let's say we have a pay scale that pays you ~15% raise yoy + years of experience.
We have 2 people for this example - one male and one female.
Both join in at 5 yrs of experience and make 100k (example numbers) as intermediate engineers.
A year later both are making 115k.
Now the female engineer goes on maternity leave for 16 months - she get paid at the rate of 115k/yr for that period.
The male on the other hand - makes a little over 130k. On top of that he's at 7 years of experience so he's now a senior engineer - that promotion beings his salary to 150k.
The female engineer is at 115k with 6 yrs of real experience while her colleague is making 150k.
On the face this looks super unfair, but is it really?
She's getting paid based on years of working experience and those 16 months can't count towards it of course
If the job hasn't changed and each of the two people can still do what's required of them equally well, why should one earn less than the other? The man shouldn't be earning more because he's got more years at the job. He should have been promoted in to a higher paying and more responsible role. That's what experience should count towards. If he hasn't been promoted and he's still doing the same work then there's no reason for him to be earning more than the woman.
People should be paid for doing a particular job, not for being more experienced, or older, or 'better'. Promote the people who are better and more experienced.
This is the beauty of the Basecamp pay model. What the job pays increases even when someone isn't doing it, so when they come back to work they'll be on the higher salary because the market values that job more.
"She's getting paid based on years of working experience and those 16 months can't count towards it of course."
This is basically an arbitrary choice, you're still paying their salary so why not continue everything else? Similarly a male engineer might want to take 16 months paternity leave.
Allowing 16 month long full-paid leave for new parents would be an amazing policy though. This also seems like an issue with this example as IME there are very, very few companies this generous.
Well you don't have to, it's a perk just as you don't have to pay their salary. Which is why the distinction is pretty arbitrary. And experience isn't the only reason to keep up pay level for example you want to remain competitive with the local market and inflation. Presumably you also value this engineer and want them to come back to the company rather than find a new one with better pay if they feel they are falling behind whilst on leave.
You could also make an argument about the gain in experience due to motherhood and being able to take an extended break from work. I believe I'm a stronger developer for having two children for example.
I didn't recheck your calculation (assuming it's correct).
The problem often arises because it makes more sense for the mother of a baby to take a longer leave than the father (e.g. breast feeding).
Therefore, that time shouldn't count as missed work experience (although it factually is).
One can discuss if 16 months is the right time frame (or maybe say for 6 months it doesn't count as missed work experience, anything above that does). That's a different discussion.
As the father of 5 I can say that many things would have been easier if I had been able to take a long paternity leave when the kids were born. The first year is an exhausting one and having two of you around to share the work and be moral support would have made it all much easier.
It would be better in all kinds of ways, more equitable, better for the mother and child, better for the company, if the father got just as much time off as the mother.
> that time shouldn't count as missed work experience
Assuming (big assumption) that they started at exactly equal skill, and learn at the same pace...well, practice makes perfect. One will be better than the other.
Ive taken sabbaticals in the past, and it sure as hell affected by skills vs someone who didn't.
I don't think we should compare voluntary time off to raising a family. I don't have kids, and I know it's voluntary to have kids, so one could make the argument we should equate both.
But the reality is that when raising a family almost always the female takes more time off work than the male. So, governments and companies should incentivize that both take equal time off and that it has the same effect on their respective future careers.
It definitely is not equal. Having a kid likely means much less time for side projects and continuous learning and has a huge impact on sleep quality. It will most definitely have a negative impact on skill and productivity unless one makes up for it with more grit and harder work.
Totally agree that the only viable solution is for men and women to share the burden more equally and that starts with near equal leave, as you said.
Won't change the advantage that people with no kids will have, but they are giving up on "the most wonderful thing in the world" to get it, after all.
Raises, vacations (when I was at companies that gave them based on tenure), promotion considerations, you name it.
I recovered a bit since I was working on side projects during sabbatical and could talk for them in interviews, so switching companies helped a tad (though finding someone who would hire someone with a big hole on their resume wasn't easy).
There's also just stuff that you only learn on the job and can improve on indefinitely, like managing people, projects, etc that obviously was behind by the amount of time I was off work and meant I wasn't up to snuff for some opportunities.
I have worked with people who have as many years of experience as me but are at a very different seniority level, for example by learning less (or more) in their prior jobs than I did.
If you were to hire them and me for a role where that difference is relevant (as it often is), we shouldn't be in the same seniority of job and shouldn't receive the same salary.
Yeah, even in that model, number of years of experience correlates only loosely with performance and with seniority in how someone thinks, communicates, leads, and produces.
Are you advocating ignoring those factors in how to compensate or internally promote, considering them only in the decisions of whether to hire into / fire from a given role?
If so that's not very common in the software industry and didn't seem to be what you were saying (I might have misunderstood).
I did once work at a startup with formula-based comp. However the "level" they used in that formula was intended to consider all of the above factors and was not a strict mapping to length of career.
This is exactly the reason why there's talk of making paternity leave for fathers as long and mandatory as maternity leave. It has the added advantage of getting young fathers more involved with their kids, as well as being there for the mother after she's delivered a baby.
The downside is of course that mandatory leave sounds weird.
I'm not aware of any company or country that makes even maternity leave mandatory for the worker. And in every case where the kid isn't born directly from the mother's body, such as via surrogacy arrangements or via adoption, there's no inherent reason why one parent is biologically more likely to need time to recover than the other.
That said, it's absolutely a good thing to offer good paternity leave and encourage fathers to share the burden.
Social structures can help make this more possible than a small startup could otherwise afford.
For example, in Quebec where I currently live, there's a provincially run parental insurance plan which funds a benefit of partially paid parental leave by a payroll deduction, which employers sometimes augment further but the provincial part still goes a long way.
It's mandatory for employers and self-employed people to fund the system; use of benefits, and the choice between different benefit packages, is at the option of the new-parent worker.
Then i don't think there is a problem with your logic - at the end of the day i think the question is: are you treating people fairly? and if you can honestly say that [gender] is not playing a role in compensation then you are fine.
So I had posted this earlier but I'll post again with another update. I'm based out of Toronto.
2012 - small business owner - 60k AED / yr (no taxes) - built Wordpress websites in my spare time
2013 - technical cloud marketing intern - 60k / yr CAD - FAANGish company
2013 - contractor - 30k / yr CAD - Engineering consultancy
2014 - Software Dev Fullstack - 22k / yr CAD - early stage startup
2015 - Lead Software Dev Fullstack / Architect + DevOps - 55k / yr CAD - very early stage startup
2015 - Lead Software Dev Fullstack / Architect + DevOps - 60k / yr CAD - very early stage startup
2016 - Software Dev - 60k / yr CAD - medium stage startup
2016 - Techincal Consultant - 90k / yr CAD - small public company
2017 - Software Engineer + DevOps - 99k / yr CAD - medium public company
2018 - Senior Software Engineer + DevOps + SRE - 120k / yr CAD - medium public company
2019 - Senior Software Engineer + DevOps + SRE - 135k / yr CAD - medium public company
I was in the process of getting promoted and getting a higher raise, but stuff (some in my control and some out of) didn't work out. I've been focusing on my life for a bit.
Thanks for sharing your salary history. I am also located in Toronto and this is my salary history (all CAD):
2014 - Junior System Administrator $42k - fresh graduate, large company
2015 - System Administrator $55k - large company
2016 - DevOps Engineer $80k - startup
2018 - Senior DevOps Engineer $95k - large company
2019 - Site Reliability Engineer $125k - medium-size company
While the user might have issues (like cookies and other features) - I can guarantee you Facebook does all kinds of creepy stuff to identify who you are. Worse yet, once they think they've successfully identified you - they share your details with who they think you are.
Personal example:
Recently I wanted to have a look at a few ex coworker profiles (who are not my friends on FB). I didn't want to use my personal account because then it suggests me to them (something I wanted to avoid, as I'd not been in touch with them for almost a decade).
1. I created a VM (Ubuntu 18.04 + Firefox + uBlock -> enabled everything in uBlock).
2. Tried to create an Fb account -> asks for phone number. I didn't want to be identified so I could not continue.
3. Tried another way to create a new account -> success.
4. Fb obviously tried to figure out who I am -> was unable to do so at that point -> Forced me to post a picture of myself (and suspended my account until I did and they verified it).
5. Posted a made up picture and got past the first hurdle
6. Fb asked me for a phone number -> Logged out and used another means to log in.
7. Fb locked my account and asked for another picture (did similar in Step 5 once again)
8. Looked up my ex co-workers.
9. Until now, I've not been identified, I looked up a friend's profile (this friend is also my personal friend on Fb). FB immediately identified me and showed up my entire friends list as suggested friends).
10. I immediately tried to delete that profile (took 30+ days and they asked for Govt ID).
I've had multiple fake FB accounts, and FB's fingerprinting and data sharing is insanely crazy - I recently logged out of one my fake accounts on iOS via Safari Incognito (no FB app, Safari is always used as incognito) - it showed my personal phone number in the log in field.
You'll need to change your IP as well. Something you have never logged in as to create the account. Sock puppet accounts can be associated by IP and social graph searches.
I used VPNs. But FB keeps a track of a lot of public VPN & Cloud providers and then throws a ton more "captchas" your way - asking for your picture, govt id, phone number verification etc.
As for searches - I've searched a lot of random stuff totally unrelated to my personal account JUST to throw FB off while acting like a real user (liking, reading, scrolling etc.).
It only takes one to five high probability data points to link you to the original identity near flawlessly. Something rare. Clicking on a nonpublic person is one of those.
FB blocks those numbers, I've tried those in the past. Almost all major services that use phone verification ignore those numbers out right or act like they accept it but either:
I've had some iffy experiences doing that with FB, Google and Azure.
Azure wouldn't even let me use my actual main number because it happens to be a google voice number and they actively block voip numbers (seems they look up the CLEC info somehow).
2012 - small business owner - 60k AED / yr (no taxes) - built Wordpress websites in my spare time
2013 - technical cloud marketing intern - 60k / yr CAD - FAANGish company
2013 - contractor - 30k / yr CAD - Engineering consultancy
2014 - Software Dev Fullstack - 22k / yr CAD - early stage startup
2015 - Lead Software Dev Fullstack / Architect + DevOps - 55k / yr CAD - very early stage startup
2015 - Lead Software Dev Fullstack / Architect + DevOps - 60k / yr CAD - very early stage startup
2016 - Software Dev - 60k / yr CAD - medium stage startup
2016 - Techincal Consultant - 90k / yr CAD - small public company
2017 - Software Engineer + DevOps - 99k / yr CAD - medium public company
2018 - Senior Software Engineer + DevOps + SRE - 120k / yr CAD - medium public company
I too am in Toronto and this is my career progression:
2015 - Linux System Administrator - $65k - large company
2016 - DevOps Engineer - $79k - startup
2017 - DevOps Engineer - $95k - large company
2018 - Site Reliability Engineer - $115k - medium company
I saw a graph on one of the pro-Tesla sites that basically showed that the Tesla debt is to scale with the rampup of the Model 3 production, and that it isn't out of proportion for the scale of what the production scale of the Model3. And the scale now is above profitability. Is that not true?
That is not true. Tesla still hasn't paid off its debt from the Model X, the Model S, the Gigafactory, or the Supercharger network. They might have managed to achieve positive cash flow with respect to Model 3 specific investments, but that doesn't mean they generating anywhere near the level of cash they need to pay off past debts.
I think that is an arguable point and at least we don't know what their profits are, but we'll know better after q3 earnings are out. If they are making the claimed 25-30% margin on current model 3's, making 50k of them a quarter at avg price of 60k, 50k60k.25, that's a car profit $750 million/quarter. That will pay down their debt at a rate 3 billion a year. I think this is why they said after q3 they will start being a real company, with q3 and q4 at the current rate they could be profitable and actually pay off debt. If all else fails they could sell more stock right now, but that only goes so far. I think they will make a significant profit by q4, and probably a good profit in q3.
I want to bootstrap an SaaS company focused on enterprise / b2b soon and being bootstraped I can't afford to hire an sales rep/ account manager (or be one myself while working on the product) for what looks like a long process.
This is definitely a scary thought in my opinion.
Fingers crossed, I hope that's a good problem to have.
We are exactly at this stage right now. Bootstrapped, enterprise SaaS, ready for initial sales. This post could not have been more timely for me.
I'm not sure if this is possible in your niche, but we are partnering with a consulting company which provides services in the same industry/niche. We will give them a cut from the sales to do this exact process. Many leads will come from them as well. I could not imagine doing this any other way at the moment. Eventually we will certainly hire a full time salesperson.
edit: we got really lucky that this consulting company had some biz dev people who used to do SaaS sales at a previous employer.
You have to make time for sales. You HAVE to. To say there is no time because you are busy developing is dangerous. Even one hour per week can be meaningful. But you have to do it. No one knows your product, service or vision the way you do.
One of my companies builds the sales funnel for SAAS and digital agencies. We handle the entire top of the funnel (lead gen and nurturing) so by the time it's a qualified opp it's actually a prospect that has an identified pain, time line and budget to go with an understanding of our clients solution to their problem. But we dont ever close the business precisely because in digital and SAAS the results are so much better from the heartbeat then the hired gun.
In our experience, the founder should close the first 3-10 enterprise deals on their own. When you chose to outsource, you may close some deals, but you lose out on the early customer product feedback.
The relationships with your early customers are key. You need to make your early customers your biggest fans to show how your product changed their business through references and/or mini-case studies.
As Joel Sposky said, even the best, most necessary product doesn't sell itself magically. Setting up a website, selling on Amazon basically won't make you close a single sale.
You must devote a day or two a week to sales and marketing, making noise on LinkedIn and a blog, and awesome videos, then connect to people and propose them a demo of your service. That's crucial to market fit, you must have at least some prospective customers to be sure your products solves an actual pain for them.
I've tried getting interviews at Google and the only time their recruters have contacted me back were from internal referrals (none of those worked out in the end as they wanted me to move to SF, and I wanted to work from Canada).
How would one go about getting your foot in the door at such companies (I've had similar experiences with both Microsoft & Facebook as well) ?
Often employees will be open to referring you even if you don't know them well. Use social media, Facebook groups, Quora, etc. Recruiters want to be found.
Have an active github.
Make yourself Google-able. Have a website where you list projects. Screenshots help make things feel more "real", especially if it's a recruiter/sourcer who might not understand some of the technical details.
Hackathons and conferences also. They're swarming with recruiters.
For people not in college anymore, those are great advices.
Having been on the recruited and recruiting side for one of the big 5, I'd add an extra advice: Don't panic if you don't have any of the things mentioned above, especially when still young in College.
I didn't have an active github, nor a website, nor screenshots of my side projects. If you're genuinely passionate when you talk about it (no matter how small you think this is), the recruiter will notice this.
One of the most important advice that was given in this article for me is: "Show initiative even at the risk of failure"
-> You did X in a class project : It won't matter so much because you had to do it to pass your class. If it's a group project it will matter even less because there's no way for the recruiter to know if you did 90%/50%/5% of the job.
-> You did a small Android app or a personal command line tool for you, but you didn't publish it at all on github, and it's a private thing (a tool to help your grandma do X remotely), it's fine, but like the Amazon interviewee who started her game company: Mention this on your resume and to the recruiter!!
I've also seen people downplay achievements because they thought it looked lame compared to what is produced by Google/Amazon/FB/Microsoft ... but those products have dozens if not hundreds of engineers behind them, PM, UX teams etc. Of course your project will be lame compared to it. Still put it on your resume.
If you're going at a top CS school, having all of these doesn't matter as much, the recruiters usually know that the projects/classes you took are not trivial (via Alumni giving feedback on those), if you go to an average one, you need to show your passion in one way or another, working on a small side project you genuinely enjoy is a great way of showing this.
Finally, if you have very little time for side projects because you're busy working multiple side jobs to be able to pay your tuition and rent, mention it somehow when talking with a recruiter. You certainly don't want the recruiter to perceive you as what the authors describe "mentally lazy" when in fact the reason you're not doing that much in the side-project side is because you're working your ass off to simply be able to graduate. You can also use some of those side jobs experiences to show the recruiter you have some applied leadership/teamwork skills.
This github/side project thing is at the far end of diminishing marginal returns. It of course wouldn't hurt but most people I've met at these companies (where I also worked for a while) do not have side projects or public code.
So if your goal is to get the interview, go through referrals. Don't expect anything from side projects.
another quick question: in general, would it be considered ok to find recruters (and maybe employees from the same team that's hiring) on LinkedIn and contact them?
Just last weekend (Friday), I thought I had reached my breaking point. I could not handle my job, my friends, my parents and my side idea to the point I convinced myself that the only solution to my problems was suicide. I went on to 4chan to ask for help on the quickest solution.
The only reason I'm alive today is because Amazon does not have a quick shipping policy (what I ordered would have taken me over a week to receive). Now I'm taking one day at a time in the hope that I don't reach that situation again.
I truly feel sad for both the Engineer and his family!
Quit your job and work the rest out later. Ask your parents and friends for support. I'm a total stranger and I'd rather you not be dead, so imagine how the people that know you would feel.
We have this problem in our American culture: If we're not careful, we begin to derive our self worth from our work. You can choose not to do that. Quit, and when you're ready to go back to work, work to live, not the other way around. Fuck it, take something menial for a bit that doesn't follow you home.
I would really like to know what is unethical (or even illegal) about this (just so I can understand this correctly).
Uber
* created multiple fake accounts on lyft to know about it's drivers
* figured out that it's drivers were assigned numerical ids
* used said ids, to track lyft drivers.
imho, this is just figuring out your competition (say by signing up to the service) and then using this knowledge to improve your service (by incising drivers on both platforms to ditch one).
This is one of those "do things that don't scale" mean (or my interpretation of it). I say this because, one multi-billion $ "startup" is doing this to another multi-billion $ "startup".
Also, I'm sure this would never be an issue if Uber was not in the press for other crappy stuff they did.
There really are not that many tech companies in Toronto (and that are hiring unless you have 5+ yrs of experience).
Either 1. you have very very early stage startups (that expect you to work for free till they get funded),
2. funded startups that have a short runaway and expect you to work like crazy till they get to the next round of funding (during an interview with a fintech startup - it was mentioned that they expected me to work for ~12+ hrs / day but I'd still get paid for only 8 hrs. But when they scaled up, I'd be "rewarded" for my hustle, grit and commitment".
3. Big companies (Google, Mozilla, etc.) who are looking for quite a lot of devs but seem to be insanely picky about hiring them.
To add to this, there seem to be a lot of devs than jobs (or that companies can go for long without hiring for those open roles).
As someone who's worked as a Software Developer in Toronto for the past 13+ years, I totally disagree with this assessment.
First off, very few very early stage startups expect you to work for free until you get funded. Exceptions being that you're a co-founder or an unpaid intern that never touches code.
Secondly, while the startups in Toronto are probably less well funded than the ones in the US, not all require you to work for 12+ hours a day while paying you for 8 hours. It looks really shady to set these expectations especially since we have clear laws around overtime pay in Canada (describing such a work situation to friends will raise eyebrows -- definitely not the standard practice, whatever industry you work at).
Lastly, I'd say that any place worth working at (big or small) will be insanely picky about who they hire. Current employer included.
All of the above are from personal first hand experience. Of course I haven't worked for every single tech company in Toronto but I have worked for several (mainly early stage startups).
> First off, very few very early stage startups expect you to work for free until you get funded. Exceptions being that you're a co-founder or an unpaid intern that never touches code.
Obviously this is not something I have a lot of statistically accurate data for but, me and my friends are recent graduates and collectively have applied to quite a lot of very early stage startups in Toronto and out of those, we all have experienced the bait and switch of unpaid work till funding at least 50% of the time.
> Secondly, while the startups in Toronto are probably less well funded than the ones in the US, not all require you to work for 12+ hours a day while paying you for 8 hours. It looks really shady to set these expectations especially since we have clear laws around overtime pay in Canada (describing such a work situation to friends will raise eyebrows -- definitely not the standard practice, whatever industry you work at).
I didn't say all startups are like what I've mentioned. The one I'm currently working at is awesome! That said, it's more often the case that startups use their short runaway as an excuse to make you work long hours (and just to be clear - the 12hr / day was not an estimation - I was literally asked my thoughts about it during an interview - that company is still recruiting on HN Who's hiring for more employees and a quick google search shows they have increased headcount to 35 people this year and is profitable).
> Lastly, I'd say that any place worth working at (big or small) will be insanely picky about who they hire. Current employer included.
I have 0 problems with employers being picky. I worked closely with the CEO of a previous startup and I totally understand that. What I don't understand is the point of claiming you need to hire a developer (with a start date of immediately) and then leaving the position open for months altogether, or having crappy working conditions.
BTW I've interviewed at Nulogy (if that's where you are currently working) - Since this is a throwaway I can't give too much details, While I was still disappointed for the reason I was rejected it was one of the good interviews I've had (interviewer was knowledgeable, I learnt about the company and product, the tech stack, the problems they were facing, what was expected of me, and just some personal chit-chat during the coffee walk).
the first ones offer anywhere between 30% (if you are a co-founder), 15% - 1% (if you are in the first 10 to get hired).
The 2nd type offer equity (generally less than 1%) and in all honesty it's pointless - chances are they'll fail before your 4 yr vesting period (and if you work for 12 hrs/day everyday you'll probably get burnt out even before you hit your year 4). And even if they don't fail, if you do get equity (and convert it to cash) divide it by 4 + salary / yr, you are basically making less than the avg salary for your position / exp in your area.
Let's say we have a pay scale that pays you ~15% raise yoy + years of experience.
We have 2 people for this example - one male and one female.
Both join in at 5 yrs of experience and make 100k (example numbers) as intermediate engineers.
A year later both are making 115k.
Now the female engineer goes on maternity leave for 16 months - she get paid at the rate of 115k/yr for that period.
The male on the other hand - makes a little over 130k. On top of that he's at 7 years of experience so he's now a senior engineer - that promotion beings his salary to 150k.
The female engineer is at 115k with 6 yrs of real experience while her colleague is making 150k.
On the face this looks super unfair, but is it really?
She's getting paid based on years of working experience and those 16 months can't count towards it of course
Is my train of thought wrong?