Silicon Valley Software Engineer Salaries by Experience Level - <AUTHOR> https://triplebyte.com/software-engineer-salary <comment><USER2> I understand that it's hard to compare non-salary compensation. But these figures give the impression that compensation for a Bay Area software engineer is shockingly lower than the reality.

RSUs and bonuses at established companies will easily double your take home pay.

Even the salary figures themselves look low and are probably heavily skewed by an overrepresentation of underpaying startups. My base salary ~4 years ago was in the 90th percentile according to this. It's unlikely I was among the 10% highest paid Bay Area engineers at that time.

Don't settle for a mediocre salary in an area with absurdly high cost of living. Don't be satisfied with these averages. Funded startups will pay more if they need to.

<comment><USER3> > RSUs and bonuses at established companies will easily double your take home > pay.

Is this really true for more than the top subset? For instance, are there really a significant number of engineers at Oracle or Cisco getting that much non-salary compensation?

<comment><USER2> I haven't heard about how those two companies pay. It's definitely a common occurrence at Google, Apple, Facebook, Microsoft, & Salesforce.

Bonuses are often structured as a % of your base salary based upon your rank. More senior engineers will get an extra 10-25% each year essentially automatically.

This is separate from RSUs, which vary a lot more widely. Their value is especially dependent upon company stock performance.

<comment><USER4> _More senior engineers will get an extra 10-25% each year essentially automatically._

The reason part of your salary is a bonus rather than the base is so that it can be withheld if necessary, eg in a bad year. Believing that bonus is an automatic extra 10% will, one day, leave you 10% short of your expectations.

<comment><USER5> Yep, my company cut bonuses this year, so no 10% for me, definitely not something to count on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> My god this is just another universe to me. I've got 19 years on the clock doing stuff, right now extending the jenkins model to make a usable 2.0 pipeline, for a fortune 50 hiding on the new hampshire seacoast, senior- straddling-principal level and just barely squeaking out a 6 figure salary. I know it all comes out in the wash, but it just blows my mind how different money is across the country. or, i am a country bumpkin with absolutely no idea what is really out there.

<comment><USER7> It really raises the question why anyone would put a software company in the Silicon Valley area. You could get cheaper and more experienced people pretty much anywhere in the world for at least 60 - 70% the price.

<comment><USER8> My compensation is roughly 40% of the _lower_ end of any of these charts, and that's considered "not bad" in my area.

This makes me think: how valuable our work is really? Do I have a job only because I'm an inexpensive alternative to the devs from the US and western Europe?

<comment><USER9> Once you take the exchange rate into account, I'm below the 2nd percentile for a senior dev. And I make a great salary for the Vancouver area.

I knew I could double my salary south of the border, but that hurts.

<comment><USER10> I've heard it's very difficult to get H1B visa's now a days, so Canadians looking to move to the states, might not be able to.

<comment><USER11> Canadians have a TN visa option which is much simpler to get than H1B. There is no quota limit.

<comment><USER10> But software programmers don't qualify for TN visa. System analyst is the closes I think.

<comment><USER12> Wrong. You just need to phrase it the right way. The government bureaucracy considers programmers as typists, and systems analysts as programmers.

<comment><USER10> And if the border guard doesn't like the wording, they'll reject you at the border.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> (Disclosure: I work at Triplebyte and built this salary tool from our offers dataset.)

I was surprised to learn that the median senior engineer earns only $36K more than the median junior engineer (base salary only). The gap does get wider on the right tail of the distribution: The 90th-percentile senior makes $47K more than the 90th-percentile junior.

One possible explanation is that our data is dominated by startups, which lean toward equity-heavy compensation. The range in equity is so big we had to plot it on a logarithmic scale.

<comment><USER13> Another possible explanation is that business just don't see much difference between junior work performance and senior work performance.

I have 15 years of experience (both huge companies and own startups), but I keep wondering what if it's really the case: that there's simply no difference for company success? When I hire people myself, I only see value up until mid- seniority. From there what matters is just discipline, readiness to help peers, responsibility and hours candidate can really-work.

<comment><USER14> > that there's simply no difference for company success

I've found that organizational structure and politics become a limiting factor past a certain level of skill and experience.

That is, for _one_ engineer to be obviously worth the price of three or four others, they'll need more responsibility and resources somehow.

In finance, the responsibility is easy to delegate: it's the size (actual money) of decisions they'll be making. In generic software, how do you do the same thing? All the code on X servers? Primary responsibility and merge privileges on Y repos? There are interesting experiments and answers in this space, but most shops aren't oriented to think that way.

<comment><USER15> You give them important projects to lead, and give them bigger budgets to manage those projects.

<comment><USER14> At some point, that's the job description of a manager, not an engineer.

<comment><USER16> Mh.

Answering from my position. I didn't get responsibility for more systems, or bigger projects, or things like that. They made me responsible for the technical side of production. All of it, zero wiggle room.

Overall, I would not consider myself a manager. I don't have disciplinary rights, even in my team. I guess if I want someone gone, they will leave the company, but I'm no disciplinary superior.

And in my space, technical considerations still dominate. My decisions just cost more or less, affect availability, maintainability, support of our software, alow teams to go faster.

I code less chef and terraform, yeah. I'd like to do so more. But fuck me, it's better for my team to tell people to do as my team wants. It's better for me to keep my head above single resources and servers, so we keep a tactical view.

<comment><USER15> In other words it's better for you to lead your team than to do the work yourself.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> It's amazing that career lengths in this business are split into "first few years", "1-3+ years" and "5-7+ years", given that most people will have careers of 40 years or more.

<comment><USER18> Most people won't have a 40 year career in a high paying industry like software engineering in silicon valley.

A huge amount of people in high paying positions don't stick it out for 40 years straight. People become burnt out, have kids, live off savings/their partner, or just pay off their mortgage and live an lower-stress life. Sometimes people die, get long term sick, retire early or retrain. Or they hit a glass ceiling and don't want to keep pushing against it and quit.

<comment><USER19> I meet a number of people at Apple in this category (i.e 20-30 years + experience). At a certain point salary tends to flatten out unless you go into management or do something incredibly specialized.

<comment><USER20> Why do these engineers not switch jobs? Wouldn't inflation actually reduce what they are earning if their salaries do flatten out?

<comment><USER18> Switch to where? There are hardly any 6 figure professions out there that don't require a significant amount of training and sacrifice in the early years.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Number of years are not a good measure of experience. You can spend 10 years in a huge fortune 500 that isn't doing anything innovative or interesting, or even engineering right. There are people who have spent 5 years at companies with their heads in the sand.

Also, _must_ we have a key requirement of being a senior software engineer being mentoring other engineers? Just because I enjoy building good/stable systems and have done it a lot doesn't mean I want to hand-hold more junior engineers or start taking up management tasks. I see this so much at companies and it just reeks of the company trying to get me to become a part-time teacher for their own benefit -- though it's of course arguably what they're paying me to do.

<comment><USER22> By working with others, you've obviously benefited from learning from others. And even if you have spent your career alone in a dark office, the company has spent time paying you to learn from your mistakes. Why it is strange for the company to expect you to pass along anything and everything you've learned to other developers, junior or otherwise?

The stranger part is that you can't recognize that teaching other people makes the whole team better. Time spent fixing a mistake that someone on the team knew how to prevent, but was too selfish to share, is time wasted. When it comes to education, the rising tide really does raise all ships.

<comment><USER21> I absolutely recognize the fact that everyone learns from others and having a space to do that and people who are willing to invest in others is great -- my problem is that it's a requirement and not a differentiator.

Not every good engineer is a good teacher and not every good teacher is a good engineer. The two things are almost orthogonal in my opinion.

The kind of teaching you mention in the second paragraph is second nature to any good engineer. That's a base level realization, possibly even just a component of maturely working in a team as a human being. It shouldnt even be a differentiator between a 'junior' and 'senior' person to begin with, that's just hiring people who work well in teams/understand team dynamics.

To expand more on why i I dislike this requirement, I have seen companies use it only as a barrier to being promoted. "Oh yeah you're up for a promotion but you haven't lead a class on X technology yet". Having a policy like this also lets companies ignore the real problem: inadequate new hire training.

To sum up, the kind of teamwork you're suggesting is vital/good for companies, i agree. I disagree that it's a differentiator between juniors and seniors though.

Another argument is that value (being good at teaching/mentoring other engineers) is VERY valuable to the company, and the pay increase they're trying to offer for people who can do it (well, I assume) is inadequate.

<comment><USER23> This might be a bit off-topic, but after gaining some experience, teaching something to others is one of the best ways to reflect on the things you learned and gain new insights. You have to do it first, but teaching stuff will probably provide you with some deeper insights.

<comment><USER21> This is the one thing that I've seen so far that makes sense to me, as a benefit to the person who is the senior engineer (and not the company or the other engineers on the team).

Teaching something is absolutely a great way to deepen, solidify and imporove your knowledge.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER24> I find it kind of amusing that someone with 5-7 years is generally considered a senior software engineer in SV.

Maybe we need a different designation for engineers with 10-20 years of experience? Something other than "the old man/lady".

<comment><USER25> I know, I'm 37 and I'm off the scale, apparently. And here in Florida I'm making about the median for a Junior dev in Silicon Valley. For sake of comparison, my first programming job (in Colorado) paid $55k, back in the mid 2000s.

I'd jump at a remote gig in a heartbeat. Right now I'm stuck in an 80s vintage cubicle in a windowless office in an old, dust/mold/despair smelling office building while the beautiful Florida winter passes by outside.

<comment><USER26> Is it so hard to get SV/Seattle remote jobs even for someone like you (national living in the US)?

I know a bunch of people from eg. Eastern Europe who work for SV startups remotely. I'm European and planning on looking for remote US jobs within the next 2-3 years, hopefully the market is not that bad?

<comment><USER25> Yes, competition for dev jobs at actual software/tech companies is pretty fierce. I spent years trying to get hired by SV/SF/NYC tech companies (well- known, not so-well known, small startups, etc.), both onsite (when I was younger and more mobile), and remote (more recently).

Never could get to an offer :/ so I work in govt contracting, where the only requirements are having a clearance (which requires being a US citizen) and a butt capable of occupying a seat (actually having a pulse is a plus, but not necessarily required).

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> Is there any data on what the big companies (Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon, ...) are starting software engineers at? Anecdotally, friends starting at Google out of school are getting base salary offers closer to the senior numbers here than the junior numbers.

<comment><USER28> One of the guys I work with has been working in NY for 30 years, his newly graduated daughter got a first job at Facebook and earns more than him in her first year.

Either * SV is a bubble * NY is a bad places for devs * being an old dev doesn't pay

probably all 3

<comment><USER29> For what it's worth, a big company in NYC that we work with definitely pays _contractors_ with lots of experience (10+ years) $1000 a day. That's closing in on a quarter of a million dollars a year and you probably won't even have to invert a binary tree whilst juggling martinis in your interview.

<comment><USER18> Not quite though, as you get zero benefits or job security with that- in the UK you'd need to knock off 4 weeks of vacation, a couple of weeks for additional training, maybe a week or 2 for sick leave, and then budget a month or so between contracts. Plus buy your own laptop, fund your own retirement fund/pension etc. Plus it can be harder to get credit if your contract can be terminated at any notice.

And your next contract might go down, which is unlike a salary. and you're exempt from climbing the ladder to a corporate position where the really big bucks are.

So all told it's probably more like 150-180k/year

<comment><USER30> > And your next contract might go down, which is unlike a salary. and you're > exempt from climbing the ladder to a corporate position where the really big > bucks are.

My impression is that the big bucks are actually in contracting, unless you're near the top of the corporate ladder.

<comment><USER18> Contracting scales only with the hours you work, so you can't earn more than a day rate x number of days you work.

You have to leverage capital and/or people to go beyond that.

<comment><USER30> Yes there's a limit, but with contracting rates reaching 2500 GBP per day (a real life example) I'm fine with that limit.

<comment><USER31> Contracting in the UK seems to be a sweet gig. It has good tax advantages for the contractor right? And companies like it because it is easier to scale up or down based on need?

<comment><USER30> Yes and yes. However the government seems keen on making the tax situation worse, introducing new laws which tighten the noose every couple of years, so it's entirely possible that it will get bad in the next 5-10 years. Also, for non-British people, Brexit may make it make it hard/impossible to contract in the UK.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> People in Europe can be envy of salaries in US. Even in London which is not cheap either it's common for dev to get around $60k annually before tax (and taxes are high). This beg to ask a question : why employeers are so reluctant to hire remote devs even within similar timezone?

<comment><USER33> When comparing European and USian salaries, it is important to remember that companies primarily care about what it costs to employ you, which is different than the number on your paycheck. Generally speaking, the cost to employ software engineers in the EU is _much_ higher than in the US, so even though the differences in salaries seem large the cost to the companies are often similar. The proportion of that cost that goes to salary is simply much higher in the US.

Places like Silicon Valley and Seattle are still outliers but if you looked at "typical" software engineering salaries in the US the differences in salaries are explainable almost entirely by differences in payroll costs (various taxes, regulations, etc) that the employee never sees.

<comment><USER34> Do you have evidence of this? This web page suggests that the extra costs in the UK are not that high: [https://www.crunch.co.uk/knowledge/employment/how- much-does-...](https://www.crunch.co.uk/knowledge/employment/how-much-does-it- cost-to-hire-an-employee/) In some European countries it is hard to fire workers, which could be a serious issue, but in general it is hard to believe that hiring in Western Europe is not cheaper than in the US, usually.

<comment><USER33> I work at a global (nominally European) company with some of its largest offices in Europe. When I have floated the idea of hiring in Europe instead of Seattle, because of wage costs, I have been informed that it doesn't save much money despite the wage difference. The employee overhead in the EU is (to my USian mind) astonishingly high. The UK is not as bad as the continent, but I floated that too and was informed it all washes out the same.

In short, the apparent arbitrage opportunity doesn't actually exist. As you would expect in any semi-liquid, semi-efficient market.

<comment><USER34> What are the principal sources of excess overhead?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> This should probably be titled Silicon Valley _startup_ salaries by experience level.

<comment><USER36> Yea at startups you often have way more flexibility to grant larger options blocks or a bit more equity to rockstars to bring them in while the salary is closely eyed by the investors to keep burn rate low. So startup salaries are by definition lower and "just enough" to get people come there. If they added something like "assumed value of options or equity when I first joined" that would be useful to understand. The reality is a ton of people at senior levels get paid way more than 150k in Silicon Valley. Plus there are levels above senior at virtually all companies.

<comment><USER37> I think we'd need both "assumed value of options", and "Actual value of options when they were realized"

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> 2% equity is 99th percentile?

The future might look back on us and wonder why employees ever put up with this.

[https://blog.samaltman.com/employee- equity](https://blog.samaltman.com/employee-equity)

<comment><USER39> You're expecting it to be higher? This is an average. If a startup hires 10 engineers you're expecting them on average to dole out 20% of their equity just to them?

<comment><USER38> Yes. Those first 10 engineers make or break the billion dollar business.

<comment><USER39> This is a really one size fits all statement to make. I don't have data to support this but I would bet that the vast majority of startups don't have billion dollar potential. Also, it's probably more accurate to replace "engineers" with "employees". Again no data and depends on the business, but of the first 10 employees, on average maybe 5 of them are engineers? Lastly, I doubt that 10 is the right threshold. 20 at a minimum sounds more reasonable to me.

This changes your statement to "Those first 20 employees sometimes potentially make or break a billion dollar business".

I agree with the point that employees could receive more equity, but if the average right now is .15%, that's over a 13x increase to 2%. Which seems completely unrealistic and not warranted given the above.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> > We've found that engineers are at a fundamental disadvantage in salary and > equity negotiations. They always know less than the hiring manager. This is > unfair.

I'd be interested to know if they are motivated not just by a sense of fair play, but also if their commissions are tied to salary.

<comment><USER41> I think triplebyte's commission is 25% of first year salary, but that doesn't mean the people behind triplebyte are solely motivated by larger commissions.

<comment><USER42> If one wanted to speculate about bias, I think it could go either way. It's similar to the real estate agent problem: while at first glance TripleByte is incentivized to get their candidate the highest possible salary to maximize that commission, they also get no commission if the candidate doesn't accept any offers or the offers get withdrawn (presumably? I can't see how else it could work), so like a real estate agent, they want to cycle people through as fast as possible and focus on recruiting as many people as possible rather than optimizing each person's offers. The former is pro-employee but the latter is pro-company. It's not obvious to me how this would work out on net.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER43> The data in payscale.com seems to vary a lot with these numbers. I assume they have much more data than Triplebyte. For example, the 50th percentile of a SE with 3 years exp will have a salary of 100K in a city like NYC. The cost of living in NYC is as high as in SV. May be there are more engineers who are paid a lot less? I hope the corporate tax break gives a good hike but that's just a dream.

<comment><USER44> > I hope the corporate tax break gives a good hike but that's just a dream.

That dream is so not going to happen. CEOs are going to forward any tax cut to their investors. Since companies owe a fiduciary duty to their investors this should not at all be surprising.

 _Trump 's Tax Promises Undercut by CEO Plans to Reward Investors_

[https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-29/trump- s-t...](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-29/trump-s-tax- promises-undercut-by-ceo-plans-to-reward-investors)

<comment><USER3> > Since companies owe a fiduciary duty to their investors this should not at > all be surprising.

When is the myth that a company's fiduciary duty to its shareholders includes funnelling all profits back to them going to die?

<comment><USER45> Practically, with the low interest rates, cash isn't worth a whole lot to an average Fortune 500. You can already see how Apple is getting heat for having so much cash on hand, only reason there isn't more is that people are hoping for a tax repatriation holiday. With most large companies being a) well capitalized already and b) able to borrow large amounts cheaply, you have to make a really hard case that holding onto cash (or spending it internally) is the best thing to do.

Funneling all profits back to the shareholders is only a duty when there isn't much else to do with the cash, which is mostly what's happening.

<comment><USER3> > Funneling all profits back to the shareholders is only a duty when there > isn't much else to do with the cash, which is mostly what's happening.

Funnelling all profits back to shareholders is _never_ a duty.

<comment><USER44> What is 'Profit'

Profit is a financial benefit that is realized when the amount of revenue gained from a business activity exceeds the expenses, costs and taxes needed to sustain the activity. Any profit that is gained goes to the business's owners, who may or may not decide to spend it on the business.

[https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/profit.asp](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/profit.asp)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER46> These numbers can be misleading. I don't work for the big four or five, but rather for a boring enterprise company. One of our top UI developer pulls in more than 500K. How do I know that ? Because I can see his comp statement as the manager of the group.

</comment><comment><USER47> Does it take into account how many jobs the individual has worked in? Generally speaking, someone with long tenure with a single company will make less than if that person jumped around, with a salary bump at each jump.

</comment><comment><USER5> These types of posts and the ensuing comments drive me crazy because they have mentions of very high salaries (for example people talking about 400k total compensation, etc) but sparse info on what type of developer positions actually pay this. Grouping all software developers as if they are the same makes no sense to me. It's been my assumption that developers working in machine learning, and other related areas, tend to command the highest pay? I can't imagine that people are building basic CRUD apps and making $300k a year, for example?

</comment><comment><USER48> Whenever one of these salary posts/articles/studies crops up, there's inevitably some caveat: data bias, small sample size, etc. In this case, although the article is using a (hopefully) representative sample based on offers, it's still based on base salary only, which makes it very difficult to make comparisons.

I think the most accurate salary data that can be considered for comparison would be taxable wages reported on a W-2, for software engineers with different titles at different companies. The wages would be much more representative of the total compensation package an engineer gets, as it includes salary, taxable equity, bonuses, and other benefits such as health care reimbursement, relocation, etc. Since the amount is for taxable wages, I think it would also more realistically account for vesting and other special situations such as deferred compensation. Provided that the data had a large enough sample, it would include a nice cross-section of employees at different parts of their vesting lifecycle with different types of equity compensation, and thus the numbers in aggregate would be useful for comparison.

Practically, the only entity I can see doing that type of study would be the IRS, or perhaps Turbo Tax or some other tax software vendor that adds some sort of anonymous wage collection option for users when filing. That actually sounds pretty creepy and intrusive though, so hopefully nobody at Intuit or the IRS is reading this and gets any ideas!

</comment><comment><USER49> This is a huge contrast to the south and particularly in Florida. I'm a project lead in Florida, started programming when I was 8, have won multiple national competitions, and now a project lead with people working under me (most that apply have an MS degree) but as a government worker making only 58K. I work for the government because in this area of the country there have been problems with finding companies that hire based on merit (I'll just leave it at that). It's shocking to hear these numbers and think that this is the norm in other places. Maybe I just don't know Florida like I thought I did but for being a state with the 3rd largest population there are a serious lack of opportunities in technology. Maybe I'm missing something maybe someone can recommend how they've been able to 'make it' in Florida with a job here doing development. Otherwise I think it's worth putting it out there to encourage people to think about this very circumstance before ever moving here.

<comment><USER50> Being a fellow South Floridian I feel your pain and I would say it sounds like you're being underpaid for the position you're in currently but that's the story of Tech in Florida I think we can all agree on that based on equal experiences hopefully?

In my own experience it's been pretty hit or miss as you can find very wide ranging salaried jobs but it's also dependent on location here as well, some areas might be better than others as far as where the actual wealth lies thus the big cities usually seem to hold more value and wealth, you might be able to get lucky and find something in between the big cities though.

Also cost of living in Florida is relatively low but it is also raising so it's not easy when you start off with a low base that should really be higher when you compare and contrast positions elsewhere... especially surprising in the government area where you think they would staff people at least with wages people can feel financially comfortable with and not just to be able to live week to week based on their paycheck.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> The people affording those $1.2mil houses are not the people earning any of these levels in terms of takehome pay. Most senior engineers I know are getting 40-60% of their comp in straight up RSUs.

</comment><comment><USER52> In US, IRS has everyone's true salaries on per company, zipcode, job titles, years of experience base.

It would be very cool if they can be anonymized and some data scientists graph them out like this page.

</comment><comment><USER53> For the cost of living, these aren't really as high as I'd thought. Goes to show you that salary doesn't always scale with living expenses. I'm curious what the real world take home is between housing + income tax + general living expenses.

Being paid 150k but paying 3k in rent sounds like a raw deal...

<comment><USER54> It depends a great deal on your household situation and where you are on the pay scale. If you are an average skilled dev in a single income family with multiple dependants who require separate bedrooms, you are probably going to be worse off in SV. Your housing cost will be a relatively high proportion of your income, so you won't have as much left over.

If you are an above average dev who is decent at negotiating salary and splits housing with other income earners, you have the opportunity to build a ton of wealth. You can save six figures annually and buy a million dollar bungalow if you want.

SV has absolutely huge opportunity for advancement compared to most regions - I think any good software dev should spend some of their early career years here to see if they can make it big, family attachments permitting. Worst case scenario, you don't like it and go home with a stack of cash after your RSUs vest.

</comment></comment><comment><USER55> Those figures do not justify giving up a job in a cheap cost of living area. These numbers are about 60% more than corporate salaries where I live, but the cost of living in SV is roughly 3-10x greater.

<comment><USER56> > These numbers are about 60% more than corporate salaries where I live, but > the cost of living in SV is roughly 3-10x greater.

Your point doesn't necessarily follow from your argument. For example, if salaries where you live were $1,000,000 per year and the cost of living was $10,000, you would gain $600,000 per year in salary and lose up to $90,000 per year in costs, for a net profit of $510,000.

<comment><USER57> Your first-principles argument is logically correct, but totally ignores the actual costs of living and salary in the given areas. The grandparent point stands just fine.

<comment> pseudonom- The first principles argument is consonant with my actual experience in the Midwest and SV. I have vastly more money left over after living expenses in SV.

<comment><USER55> Are you single? I imagine you find a reasonably priced small apartment for a single person in SV. I doubt you can find a reasonably priced 3000 sqft house in SV.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER58> Now tell me what is the point of hiring a junior developer for the median $118K if you can get senior for median $155K? Doesn't make any sense to me. The latter can work without supervision and provide at least 5x the output.

In offshore outsourcing, 10x gap between senior and junior is the norm, not 1.5x. And it sounds fair to me.

If i managed the Valley startup in these salary conditions, i'd happily hire as many seniors as i can afford (they are a bargain at this price and even in offshore destinations, many make about as much), and let each of them manage a few $1000 a month juniors or $3000 a month mid-level ones in Ukraine.

It strongly looks like there is a 'base' payment of about $100K just for being in the Valley, and real salary is $18K for junior and $55K for a senior :) And $100K just effectively works to cover the fixed costs like exorbitant rent - that's how the market put it. And about 10% of sub-$100K positions are taken by locals who own their homes.

</comment><comment><USER59> This is still far from FANG salaries. A senior level at Google makes more than 200k total comp add in another 100k or 200k.

</comment><comment><USER60> Are these salaries reasonable? The data suggests that for jr. eng., only 12% of them make less than $100K/yr.

</comment><comment><USER61> I would love to see this broken out by gender as well.

</comment><comment><USER62> Wow, I am way underpaid.

</comment><comment><USER63> Question about triplebyte: What if you've only been learning for a few months and want to know where you stand on the learning curve? If you take the test and flop how long do you have to wait before taking at Again?

<comment><AUTHOR> We invite everyone to re-apply after 4 months. [https://triplebyte.com/candidate_faq#question-15](https://triplebyte.com/candidate_faq#question-15)

</comment></comment><comment><USER64> I want to say these distributions are shifted to the right compared to StackOverflow, Dice.com, and Glassdoor salary estimates if I recall. Does that jibe with other's impressions? Maybe this is just more up to date in the year.

</comment><comment><USER57> Comparing only salary comp is pretty useless. Total annual comp., outside of private equity and options, is really easy to value! I don't understand why they avoid it.

It would also be good to see a comp. curve for senior+1 engineers.

</comment><comment><USER65> I'm truly stunned that someone with only 5-7 years of experience is considered 'senior' in this field. Is that really the case, or is TripleBytes using funny numbers?

</comment><comment><USER66> Does anyone know an easy way to derive a Cost/$ of profit for various tech companies based upon reasonable estimates of how many engineers of whatever salary they've got? Obviously it would be a rough estimate, but it would be interesting to see, if only within an order of magnitude, just how terribly the cost center of software engineering is destroying their earnings.

<comment> lloyd-christmas For some baseline comparison, salaries usually account for 20-30% of revenue for a company (not profit).

Netflix employs about 3500 people, with a revenue of ~$11b. That ratio would put the average salary at 630k - 940k.

<comment><USER67> This simple formula doesn't hold for super profitable business like netflix. They can't spend the money they get fast enough.

<comment><USER68> Netflix is super profitable? According to what accounting methods?

<comment><USER67> According to 1M+ revenues per employees and the billions they have in the bank.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> Coming from Germany, these salaries often feel crazy to me.

Is this because owning real estate is such a big deal in the US?

<comment><USER70> Real estate is very expensive in CA. It has nothing to do with owning, rents are crazy expensive as well.

As a side note, even in less expensive areas, US salaries are way higher than European ones. I make probably 4 to 5 times what I would earn in Europe, but I also pay for more stuff that is usually almost "free" in Europe.

<comment><USER69> Like? I know about health insurance, but what else?

<comment><USER70> Quality food is more expensive, day care is very expensive too. It is also understood that you should build up your own retirement fund. Phones and internet access is very expensive compared to most european countries.

And just to clarify, it's always weird to say "in Europe". We're talking about close to 30 countries that have big differences between each other. My XP is mostly with western and northern Europe. I have visited but never lived in eastern Europe for example.

<comment><USER71> > Quality food is more expensive

The United States (as a whole) spends less of a % of income on food than any other country

<comment><USER70> _quality_ was the keyword here. Yes people spend less on average, but the quality of what they buy is awful. I lived 20 years in various countries of the EU and 10 in the US. Based on my XP it is more expensive in the US to get the same quality that's it. I don't have data or fancy metrics to back it up, it's just my empirical observation :)

<comment><USER69> Yes, I read Walmart failed in Germany, because we simply expected food to be too damn cheap :)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER72> _Senior software engineers: have 5-7+ years professional engineering experience_

At five to seven years of experience, one is still just an apprentice. A senior engineer will have 20-30 years of experience. What would those guys with 20 years of experience be considered then?

</comment><comment><USER73> Almost making the senior software engineer salary and working remotely in a non-expensive coastal city. Oh boy is it going to be hard moving back. Maybe I won't :)

I wonder what the Seattle prices are? Probably somewhat close I would imagine.

</comment><comment><USER74> One thing to keep in mind here is that companies often use recruiters to fill their more difficult roles. If 25% of positions are filled by recruiters, these offers could be closer to the top 25% of salaries, too.

</comment><comment><USER75> To get the real picture, though, you really also need to include total compensation (e.g. avg bonuses, shares, 401k benefits). The actual numbers are quite a bit higher, I bet. Particularly for more established companies.

</comment><comment><USER76> It honestly pains me to look at salaries of people in the Bay Area compared to mine. I see salaries 3X mine and wonder, 'where did I go wrong?'

</comment><comment><USER77> So how does a SV salary compare to the rest of the world?

I.e. what is the conversion factor for a salary in e.g. NY, Canada, UK, Germany, France, etc.

<comment><USER78> In Germany 30-60%. Higher in the big expensive cities (Berlin, Munich).

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> These numbers reinforce what I think anytime someone suggests I move to California to "further my career." Fuck that.

<comment><USER80> While I agree cost of living is a tough pill to swallow in California, a salary table is irrelevant to the concept of 'furthering ones's career'. To further your career is, in fact, usually about taking something that is not financially beneficial but valuable for the experience or worldview that it imparts.

<comment><USER79> I live in Austin. I think my career will be fine here.

<comment><USER81> Same, however my company is wanting me to relocate to the Bay Area.

For a bit of background, I have been in Austin for about 7 years, and coding professionally for almost 3 at this company. This has been my first full time job out of college and I have really enjoyed working for them.

The cost of living adjustment they're offering is not what I was hoping it would be. After you take out California state taxes, it is really only about a 15% bump. I would say I make slightly above average for austin, and it would put me about below average in SF/OAK according to this graph. Rent is the huge killer for me because we (wife and I) will probably be paying around $1000 more a month.

Long story short, the financials aren't ideal for moving out there, however part of me wants to get out for a bit and live somewhere new. Also I do think it would help me advance faster if I was out there, because Austin is a satellite office and HQ is in the Bay Area.

I'm really on the fence about it :/

<comment><USER79> I'm 32 and recently married. I also have two large dogs. SF is completely out of the question for me. If I was younger and unmarried or had a working spouse I'd be more interested in trying it out purely for the experience of being out there (I'm told it's fun).

Having said that. Aside from the financial decision I have so little interest in being inside the giant tech bubble that most of my peers out there seem to live in. The vast majority of my friends in Austin are not in tech and I like it that way.

I totally understand your situation though. It's tough if you plan to stay at the same company and want to move up. Do you think you could negotiate a bigger bump for the move? It's one thing to be able to technically afford to survive out there. It's another entirely to be out there for 5+ years and then leave and realize you have basically nothing saved.

Oh, last point. I obviously have no idea what your relationships are like at your company but could you possibly make it clear to some people above you what your concerns are about the move and sort of get an idea for how likely it is you could move up and how long that would take? For instance if your manager thinks it's possible you could be in some new position in 2 years that pays a much better salary maybe it makes sense. Of course they cant guarantee that to you but you could judge the situation yourself.

<comment><USER81> We just recently started the move conversation, so negotiations are still on going. I will definitely take your point and try to get a more concrete answer from my manager on how this would affect my career trajectory.

The realist in me is saying it will be a no-go if they don't budge a bit. However we don't have kids and are still relatively young (27), so we are feeling that this might be a good opportunity to move and try something new. Also I skateboard and SF is one of the skate meccas of the US, not to mention all of the other awesome things California has to offer. I love Austin, but I am just feeling like I know every nook and cranny now a days.

Even though the adjusted income is slightly under average we wouldn't be scraping by, however we would definitely have to scale back our lifestyle a bit which we were expecting. Also my wife would definitely do some sort of work out there which will help. My biggest concern is maintaining our current savings rate, and if I can do that then I think we will pull the trigger. The decision will be hard none the less.

Thanks for the response.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER82> So what should be the expected total annual compensation from GAMF with 8 years experience? 260k ~ 300K? or more than that?

</comment><comment><USER60> Are these salaries reasonable? The data for Jr. Eng. suggest that only 12% of Jr. Engs. make less than $100K/yr.

<comment><USER71> SV as a whole has juniors pinned ~ the 103 mark.

</comment></comment><comment><USER83> How many hours a week are these people putting in? As a senior-level developer in the midwest, my pay looks paltry in comparison and yet I bet you I live a much more comfortable lifestyle overall--zero debt, a decent work day in a calm environment and decent time off.

If your cost of living is so ridiculous that you have to pay people 50-100% more than pretty much the entire rest of the continent what have you gained?</comment>


The power of small teams - <AUTHOR> http://a.viary.com/bizblog/posts/the-power-of-small-teams <comment><USER2> The concept that smaller teams are more efficient is not new. I've been reading The Mythical Man-Month and it makes this admission right out of the gate. However, as the team gets smaller it also limits the size of the projects it can take on. To that end, what the rest of the book is more or less devoted to is how to do large projects with "small" teams by separating orthogonal tasks and more efficiently organizing the communication structure.

In other words, read the book if you haven't already. ;)

<comment><USER3> Predating this is 'A Pattern Language', by Christopher Alexander. It seems that teams of < 8 are universally more productive, with ~5 being optimal (at least in Japanese Culture). 'A Pattern Language' is intriguing and useful because it uses real data, and sociological results, to deduce a theory, and makes specific suggestions for architecture and the usage of space. For example, it's suggested that people use converted homes for workspaces, due to the large variation in room size and privacy, and the presence of places to work, think, cook, eat, play, and relax. It also points out that smaller meetings and workspaces are more productive, and supports this by showing a graph of '% of people never to say anything' or 'ideas not expressed' versus participants in a meeting).

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> I work for a startup now valued at around a quarter of a billion dollars that's negotiating enormous deals with some of the largest providers out there... and our entire development team can fit around a dinner table. In fact, we have significantly more products than we have programmers! Our new CTO, who previously worked at a much larger company, was utterly shocked when he found that our massive product lineup was developed by such a small team.

There's also a huge benefit we gain from using existing open-source solutions whenever possible--if you avoid NIH syndrome and stop trying to reinvent the wheel, you can regain a huge amount of productivity.

</comment><comment><USER5> Growth is tough in general. A team getting larger forces a leader or leaders to emerge. Not everyone can lead or manage. Not everyone takes direction well. All separate skills from just being able to code or design.

Larger teams is where politics come in and where I don't want to be. Ideally I only want to work in smaller teams.

</comment><comment><USER6> Put walls between people, and you'll need to hire more people to coordinate them. Dirt basic common sense, yet one that most organizations have a hard time with. That's a cultural issue. Everyone's allergic to working on tables.

Someone once wrote a comparison between DB2's architecture and Ingres. Both are the exact same kind of application built on similar kinds of machines at around the same time. Yet Ingres was built as 4 separate process. The Ingres team was organized in 4 separate groups.

<comment><USER7> That's a nice example of Conway's Law.

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=82997>

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> I find the author's assumptions that every idea stems from one individual and must be (ineffectively) communicated to everyone else to be rather strange. I'm all about small teams, and I personally prefer to work alone, but to ignore the contributions that are offered by other members of the team is folly. The "corruption [of ideas] at multiple points" that he mentions could just as easily be interpreted as improvements on the idea.

<comment><USER9> Improvements are mutations that fill in the gaps where information is missing. Some mutations might be improvements. Most aren't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER10> Though the article was interesting, it's nothing that isn't said a lot: quality communication is necessary and also hard; quality communication between more people is commensurately harder.

On another note: the link to hitmeuplater.com was neat. I hadn't see it before and think it's a cool idea.

<comment><USER9> Sure, but if you attend any demo type of conferences you'll see a lot of entrepreneurs who brag about how they are growing their team out to 20 people over the next x months. There's no justification offered as to whether those people are actually needed... just the general "we're going to become a huge company". It's like the startup equivalent of a penis measuring contest is staff size (and don't get me started on funding raised).

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Software development management is all about balancing "one is the ideal team size" with "this project is going to take 200 man-years." You sacrifice productivity in order to complete stuff in a reasonable time frame.

</comment><comment><USER12> _Communication is actually bad. It inherently involves a loss of information._

Sounds to me like Avi is in the business of telling rather than being in the business of doing.

<comment><USER9> Er, you mean the opposite. There is no advocating telling, only doing, in this article.

<comment><USER12> I stick by what I said.

I believe communication to be the fountainhead of motivation and inspiration in any functioning work environment.

I say that the author is in the business of telling rather than the business of doing because anyone who is doing knows that it's their relationships with those around them that keeps their limbs moving.

People were not born to be communicated _to_. Communication is not a one-way street. The author's strategy is optimized for telling rather than sharing, accounting in no way for the value of discussion, critique and collaboration.

A strategy of working in small teams can be great, but don't let its motivator be to _cut out as many communication points of failure as possible_.</comment></comment></comment>


Aaron Greenspan sues Facebook, Sequoia, Andreesen, YC, others - <AUTHOR> http://www.scribd.com/doc/139975904/20130506-complaint <comment><USER2> The key to understanding this lawsuit lies in a technical point having nothing to do with the merits of the claims and which appears at pages 35 through 37 of the complaint.

In that section, the plaintiff, Think Computer Corporation, "respectfully requests that Civil Local Rule 3-9(b) be retired, or that Plaintiff be exempted from the Rule given its particular ownership [i.e., owned 100% by one individual] and tax structure [i.e., status as a Sub S corporation]."

The Civil Local Rules are the rules used by the federal court in the Northern District of California to regulate its proceedings procedurally, specifying who needs to do what in connection with the filing and prosecution of lawsuits in this court. These rules have the force of law and litigants who ignore them do so at their peril.

Rule 3-9(b), which the plaintiff asks be "retired," states that a "corporation . . . or other such entity may appear only through a member of the bar of this Court."

In other words, a corporation cannot represent itself in a lawsuit of this type and Think Computer Corporation has filed this action without an attorney representing it while purporting to represent itself in obvious violation of this rule.

A few comments about what I think this signifies:

1\. The plaintiff's principal is a spirited individual who has very definite ideas about the money transmission laws and who feels highly aggrieved by the impact that California's 2010 law has had on his company.

2\. Those ideas about these laws are, in my view, quirky ones that take significant liberties in interpreting how laws work. In other words, without detailing particulars, I believe that Mr. Greenspan's views of these laws will likely not hold up when tested formally in a court of law.

3\. Point 2 above, coupled with the complaint's wild swinging out at multiple parties on dubious theories of liability, is the most probable explanation of why there is no lawyer representing the plaintiff in this action.

4\. To sue investors basically for having chosen to fund high-profile startups that the plaintiff deems "unlicensed money service businesses" is flaky and will never hold up. If the action is not bounced for violation of Rule 3-9(b), it will be out the gate as to these defendants on grounds that it does not state a cognizable claim for legal relief.

5\. To sue the startups themselves for allegedly providing unlicensed money services is also quite dubious. The money transmitter laws are basically laws that give state governments the authority to require that bonds be provided, that minimum capitalization requirements be met, and that other precautions taken, to ensure that whoever handles escrowed monies takes prudent steps to protect those whose funds are entrusted to them. If these laws are violated, the state authorities have the power to take legal actions to enforce them. Nowhere is there any express private right of action that gives any private citizen the right to file suit complaining about alleged violations of these laws. Therefore, it is a stretch for any private party such as Think Computer to seek damages, injunctive relief, or any other form of legal remedy owing to alleged violations of the money transmitter laws.

6\. There are conceivably some legal remedies that might work if the facts support them, one of them being for false advertising claims under the Lanham Act (which is one of the claims asserted here). One competitor can indeed sue another competitor for private damages and other relief if the other competitor is gaining an unfair competitive advantage by falsely advertising that its products or services do something that is material to the customer's decision to use that product or service. Here, the result would turn on the ability to show that the parties sued are in fact engaged in false or deceptive advertising. Even here, however, the case is likely sketchy, in my view, from a quick review of the allegations made.

All in all, this is a most unusual case filed by an unrepresented party that cannot legally represent itself in the forum chosen and resting on legal theories that are a real stretch in most cases. I believe Mr. Greenspan is both sincere and passionate about what he believes but what he asserts is really a case to be made to the legislative policy-makers, not to the courts. There may indeed be incredible unfairness in the way in which these laws are framed and applied. But that does _not_ mean a private party should be able to indiscriminately sue anyone around who happens to be offering services that involve some form of money handling, or their investors, for the results of the existing system. That in itself in not only a stretch but an abuse. Wrong parties, wrong framing. The action should therefore be dismissed forthwith by the plaintiff as having been ill-considered. If it is not, it will be dismissed by the court in fairly short order.

<comment><USER3> > Nowhere is there any express private right of action that gives any private > citizen the right to file suit complaining about alleged violations of these > laws.

I thought California 17200 allows for private citizens to sue on behalf of the general public and that no actual injury against the plaintiff is required. Is there something different about this case?

(below quote and link for other HN readers, I'm sure grellas is familiar.)

"Thus the statutory language allowing actions to be brought "by any person acting for the interests of itself, its members or the general public" effectively deputizes the world to find and bring environmental violators to the bar of justice."

<http://www.envirolaw.org/Library/17200tools.html>

<comment><USER4> The page you link to at envirolaw.org is out of date by almost a decade. It is discussing the law as it was before Proposition 64. Proposition 64, which passed in 2004, among other things changed the part of section 17204 which said "any person acting for the interests of itself, its members or the general public" to "a person who has suffered injury in fact and has lost money or property as a result of the unfair competition".

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Perhaps I'm new here, but any chance the title might get 's/Greenspan/Aaron Greenspan/'? I got real confused as to why Alan Greenspan might be suing tech companies...

<comment><USER6> Unfortunately this change didn't help. I thought it said "Alan Greenspan" until I started reading the lawsuit, saw "Think Corp", and went back to re- read the HN headline.

I agree with pedalpete, the headline really should just say "Think Corp".

<comment><USER7> That would have helped me out a bit... I have no effin' clue who Aaron Greenspan is. Well, except that now I know he's the guy who is suing YC and a bunch of others.

<comment><USER8> He's been making the same rants in the comments here for a long time... and he hasn't found many sympathetic to his cause. I can't imagine suing YC (frivolously) will gain many friends.

His username is thinkcomp.

<https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=thinkcomp>

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> Since title changes are being done anyway, this one should be changed to "Aaron Greenspan". There's only one famous Greenspan, and it's not this one.

<comment><USER10> My first thought was why Alan Greenspan would do this and what his incentive would be.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> Even though I'm not a huge Greenspan fan (are there any?), I find this money transmitter stuff incredibly fascinating. I haven't reviewed the relevant legal code, but I strongly suspect that Greenspan is right in that:

(1) there are lots of little annoying laws related to money transmitters that makes it very difficult to get new payment stuff off the ground

(2) If you have deep pockets and good lawyers you can pretty much ignore these laws

I strongly suspect that the correct solution is to change the laws, but that this is also an even greater pain in the ass than protecting yourself with highly paid lawyers, esp. since relevant laws vary significantly from state to state. What exactly Greenspan is attempting to prove here is beyond me, but I'm still quite curious as to the results.

<comment><USER12> Ahh, is this why all these tech giants use a non-money credit system for their stores and networks: Sony, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon(?), ... there must be many more.

<comment><USER13> The reason why companies use points instead of $ is: 1) Easy to keep the price consistent world wide 2) There is a casino chip theory that you spend more money when it is abstracted. People spend more when they use their credit cards as opposed to cash, etc. 3) You can sell point cards at retailers to the unbanked. In the Xbox case this is important because a lot of your audience is kids.

<comment><USER14> 2) is on the spot. As soon as you introduce an abstract that is one step removed from money, people are more willing to gamble with that abstract. This is true for everything from credits to casino chips and from stock/shares to options and derivatives. Also, the word "willing", in this context, is actually an intended pun, since this happens on a subconscious level.

There is a lot of literature on the topic; some pieces even establish a tie between that notion and the most recent banking crises and scandals. For example, stock options are not just one step removed from currency, but at least two or more.

Interesting stuff indeed.

<comment><USER15> I suspect that even applies to foreign hard currency that you're not familiar with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> [http://ia801700.us.archive.org/20/items/gov.uscourts.cand.26...](http://ia801700.us.archive.org/20/items/gov.uscourts.cand.265908/gov.uscourts.cand.265908.docket.html)

"2013-05-08 Order to Show Cause ORDER TO SHOW CAUSE.

If, by 5/22/2013, an attorney qualified to practice in the United States District Court for the Northern District of California does not appear in this action to represent Plaintiff, the court will dismiss the action without prejudice. No hearing will be held on the order to show cause unless otherwise ordered by the court. Signed by Judge Edward J. Davila on 5/8/2013. (ejdlc1, COURT STAFF) (Filed on 5/8/2013) (Additional attachment(s) added on 5/8/2013: # (1) Certificate of Service) (ecg, COURT STAFF)."

<comment><USER17> He has to hire a lawyer or the case won't move forward, because you can't represent yourself when filing as a corporation. We'll find out within 14 days if Greenspan actually intended to take this case to court, or if it's just about the awareness/PR it creates.

<comment> X-Istence He asked the court to waive that requirement ...

<comment><USER17> What you're reading above my comment is the response to that request. He has until the 22nd to retain a qualified attorney or the case will be dismissed.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> lol

78\. Defendant Yishan Wong, in response to an article authored by Plaintiff on the website Quora, wrote the following comments (among others) indicating his knowledge of payments-related laws and regulations on June 15, 2011:

"Yeah, I am constantly amazed at how people haven't yet learned that the paymentsindustry is really hard to get into. It was okay for first-wave companies like PayPal to besurprised by it, but anyone who does their due diligence before starting a paymentsstartup should know everyone – literally everyone, including regulators and thegovernment – is going to be working against you. If you can't take the heat, get out of the kitchen and go start a photosharing startup."

"Payment startups face a far more adversarial environment, including utter and totalhostility. It was okay for PayPal to whine about this (though they didn't), because itwasn't known. But now it's known. If you run a payments startup, you are fightingagainst thugs, actual criminals – both real ones and government ones. It is not normalbusiness. It is like trying to start a business in an actual warzone. Complaining aboutthis is just whining. There is no actual solution than to win. Anything else is, in fact, justwhining."

Presumably with the hope of "winning," Defendant Wong proceeded to invest his own personalfunds in Unlicensed MSB Defendant Balanced (part of a $3.4 million seed financing round)

<comment><USER19> Trying to create political pressure against these "thugs" isn't necessarily a bad move. Let's say you want to start a company which bypasses Taxi medallions. It's in your interest to create a PR storm over the unfairness of the medallion system. It's _not_ OK to be surprised when the entrenched powers try to bite you (though it may not hurt to _act_ surprised). Of course, if you don't have the stomach for it, you shouldn't be getting into the space.

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> Some context:

(1) Think Computer Corporation built FaceCash (<https://www.facecash.com/>) a mobile payment solution

(2) Aaron Greenspan is Think's President and CEO

Maybe he's trying to get these companies to lobby against "money transmitter" regulation.

<comment><USER21> Some additional context about past litigation:

[http://abovethelaw.com/2012/06/facebook-litigation- continues...](http://abovethelaw.com/2012/06/facebook-litigation-continues-a- closer-look-at-aaron-greenspan/#more-167565)

<comment><USER22> For fuller context don't forget Aaron Greenspan vs Google, Inc. [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/aaron-greenspan/why-i-sued- goo...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/aaron-greenspan/why-i-sued-google-and- won_b_172403.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> I'm one of the parties to this: I founded ActBlue back in Cambridge before coming to SF and building Meteor.

The funny thing is it came to my house yesterday as a single cover sheet plus a CD-ROM full of files, and I literally don't have a way to read a CD-ROM anymore.

<comment><USER24> If you don't have a way to read a CD-ROM, how do you know that it is "full of files"? Couldn't it be an audio CD?

<comment><USER17> Probably from the cover sheet attached to the CD. It's a safe assumption he hasn't been served with a mix tape.

<comment><USER25> It could be a DVD of _You Got Served_.

<comment><USER26> or if he was feeling really generous the entire Burn Notice series

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER27> There is something to be said about how in the US it's often best not to contact regulators at all, and to simply fly under the radar for as long as possible.

That said, this guy is seriously toxic. Just by responding to his emails in a friendly manner can get you named in a lawsuit... and to blame competitors instead of regulators... Seems like someone to be avoided at all costs.

<comment><USER28> Bear in mind this guy has spent a fortune and has been severely screwed over by regulators, while dozens of startups operate in the clear with similar services. He could probably get over the hurdles with funding, but who's going to put his feet into this mess? I'd be freaking out too.

Makes me wonder, if had he operated under the radar for a while, and gradually complied with newly imposed regulations, things would be ok. Even if he got a massive fine, that'd be good publicity, and he must be spending a ton on lawyers anyway.

<comment><USER29> Apparently that was first avenue of action. He says here : <https://www.facecash.com/legal/brown.html>

that he applied, but they required his company to raise 80 million dollars before he could pay $5,000 fee.

Strangely enough however, he also claims to have built facebook (although the language keeps it vague enough that you aren't aware of his contribution)

<comment><USER28> Not strange at all. See [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Facebook#Aaron_Gre...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Facebook#Aaron_Greenspan_and_houseSYSTEM)

For some perspective, Stripe has only raised $40M to date.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> Somehow I suspect suing everyone, including those who would otherwise be your friends/allies, isn't in the Dale Carnegie book...

<comment><USER31> To be fair, you'd be surprised by some of the stuff that's in the original version.

</comment></comment><comment><USER32> Reason for including YC in this nonsense:

 _The YCFunds share common management and are venture capital funds invested in a number of unlicensed money transmitters._

Can that really hold up? Can an investor be held liable for the decisions of a company they invested in? By that logic, what's to stop someone from suing Facebook shareholders?

<comment><USER33> The whole reason for this mess is that VCs refused to invest in his "legal" startup (didn't want to waste money on compliance costs?) and invested in a bunch of "illegal" competing companies instead.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> California's money transmission business statute is quite broad:

2030\. (a) A person shall not engage in the business of money transmission in this state, or advertise, solicit, or hold itself out as providing money transmission in this state, unless the person is licensed or exempt from licensure under this division or is an agent of a person licensed or exempt from licensure under this division.

. . .

(m) "Monetary value" means a medium of exchange, whether or not redeemable in money.

(n) "Money" means a medium of exchange that is authorized or adopted by the United States or a foreign government. The term includes a monetary unit of account established by an intergovernmental organization or by agreement between two or more governments.

(o) "Money transmission" means any of the following: (1) Selling or issuing payment instruments. (2) Selling or issuing stored value. (3) Receiving money for transmission.

. . .

(v) "Stored value" means monetary value representing a claim against the issuer that is stored on an electronic or digital medium and evidenced by an electronic or digital record, and that is intended and accepted for use as a means of redemption for money or monetary value or payment for goods or services. The term does not include a credit card voucher, letter of credit, or any stored value that is only redeemable by the issuer for goods or services provided by the issuer or its affiliate, except to the extent required by applicable law to be redeemable in cash for its cash value.

\</comment><comment>-

This appears broad enough to include Facebook Credits, bitcoins, etc.

</comment><comment><USER35> houseSYSTEM failed -> Sue Facebook

FaceCash failed -> Sue Facebook + everyone

Aaron got rich by filing a frivolous lawsuit against Zuck, might as well try it again, huh? This time with even more victims.

Building successful companies is hard, let's go lawyering.

<comment><USER36> Why not, it seem to be a great business model, that's what America is all about lately.

<comment><USER35> Not in the world of startups it's not.

<comment><USER36> As long as there can be great exits, the VC will fund it.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> It seems strange to file one suit against a ton of defendants, making it more likely that they will pool resources for defense. Or is that not possible in this context because of the nature of the complaint?

<comment><USER17> I don't think Greenspan actually cares about winning anything. This is about making everyone play by the same rules -- bringing attention to the fact that California makes it near-impossible for a startup to get licensed as an MTA, essentially shut down his company for trying to get licensed, while all these other startups just ignore the problem and operate illegally.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> Can someone please translate this lawsuit into common language. It looks pretty interesting, but I'm not familiar with the laws on money transmission. Thanks!

<comment><USER39> This group of people knowingly broke the law and profited from it. I chose to obey the law and forgo profits. I would like some profits, hopefully conveyed by legal means, to make me whole.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> I wonder if HN user thinkcomp (i.e. Aaron Greenspan) is willing/able to comment here. It would be interesting to know his motivations for doing this.

<comment><USER40> Probably legal reasons why he won't. Most companies make it a policy not to comment on ongoing litigation. Usually nothing good comes of it. Although there are exceptions...

<comment><USER41> > Most companies make it a policy not to comment on ongoing litigation. > Usually nothing good comes of it. Although there are exceptions...

This might be the only case where the only good that could possibly come of it would be to comment.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> I'd give my initial opinion based on a first light reading of the complaint, but I'm afraid Greenspan might find a way to construe that as money transmission and add me to the suit.

</comment><comment><USER42> Pretty weird. On the one hand, there clearly went some effort into this. On the other hand, they are not represented by counsel (p.36), which makes the likelihood of the case being thrown out for procedural reasons regardless of the merits around 99%. All in all I'm leaning more towards publicity stunt...

</comment><comment><USER43> Like others predict, I think this will get booted because of lack of standing. Interesting that Greenspan makes the broad First Amendment argument about being able to represent his corporation as legal counsel based on political speech rights found in Citizens United.. but that case is not on point and won't help here. The court is unlikely to explain why and probably will dismiss it for reasons Grellas notes in the first comment too. The complaint isn't as long as it looks for non-lawyers - just skim over the parts where he lists all the defendants. After page 37 it's just copies of the laws, regulations and screenshots.

Assuming he hired a lawyer to file his other case claiming arbitrary enforcement of the CA law against his company (discussed in paragraph 4 of the complaint linked to above), that one seems much more likely to go somewhere although relief at this point is pretty unclear.

Also the first time I've noticed someone use "pivot" in the Lean Startup sense in a legal complaint (fn. 3).

</comment><comment><USER44> On page 35, in order to represent his own company as a non-lawyer, Greenspan appeals for an exception to the rule that his corporation, as the plaintiff, must retain legal counsel. He bases this request on (among other reasoning) the _Citizens United_ decision.

Like Greenspan, IANAL, but I suspect his complaint will die quickly on that basis alone.

<comment><USER16> The court replied on 5/8 that he has until 5/22 to retain qualified counsel or it will be dismissed without prejudice.

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Did anyone read the part where he explains that he is not being represented by a lawyer? ("REQUEST FOR CIVIL LOCAL RULE 3-9(b) EXEMPTION AND RETIREMENT.") That seems a very unusual decision indeed. Does anyone have any idea why he would do it that way? Is it probably a money issue?

<comment><USER46> Funny! After reading the first few pages, I said, "What lawyer is willing to put his name on this garbage?" and paged around in the document. Only to find no lawyer's name at the bottom, just his own. And now you confirm it.

Is there some way that this isn't idiotic? I have seen a federal judge in full-on "this case is a waste of my time" mode, and it is fearsome. I would never file a document with a federal court without having a very experienced lawyer involved.

Of course, I _also_ wouldn't step to all of those rich and powerful people without a clear and sensible plan of action. If Greenspan has one, I can't extract it from this document. Is he a total loon?

<comment><USER47> Have you looked at Aaron Greenspan's legal credentials ? He is (or atleast claims) a fellow of Stanford Law School. Has build a site for searching legal articles and in general spent considerable time researching this issue

<comment><USER33> But real lawyers know not to represent themselves. It's too easy to get emotionally wrapped up in the case and lose perspective.

<comment><USER48> a friend dated someone who was a new lawyer and tried representing him/herself in a divorce. after crying on the stand it did not end well.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> Well, that's one way to get blacklisted by everyone in SV.

</comment><comment><USER50> It seems really odd to me that AirBnb is being included in this list.

        57. Defendant Airbnb, Inc. allows its customers to rent the homes of other
        customers for varying durations, in lieu of a hotel. To process each
        transaction it holds onto the customer's funds, and remits those funds
        to the property owner at the conclusion of the stay, minus its fee.

Well, okay, but wouldn't this apply to every company that acts as a marketplace between buyers and sellers?

Is the point of this to show the absurdity of the scope of the Money Transmission Act?

<comment><USER17> In most marketplaces, the buyer pays the seller. In this marketplace, the buyer pays the marketplace and the marketplace pays the seller. Any business that engages in the transfer of funds between people is a money transmitter and needs a license. Escrow service has always been regulated.

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> Probably should add the first name to the title. That family name is usually associated with somebody else...

<comment><USER52> Yes. For some reason, I assumed it was Alan Greenspan.

</comment></comment><comment><USER53> Does this have anything to do with this patent (listing Greenspan as the inventor), which has a publication date of March this year? <http://www.google.com/patents/US8396808>

</comment><comment><USER54> It is better to ask for forgiveness than to ask for permission. It is easier to get a money transmitters license after you IPO than before. Taxi medallions, asinine sublet and renter laws are all examples of this. Legal gray areas make great businesses. The CA law he references was sponsored by the big financial companies to favor protectionism and so if enforced will raise hell and probably be overturned by the Feds and currency/interstate commerce laws.

</comment><comment><USER33> "Fake it till you make it" as unfair competition? Interesting theory, but it seems like it would cause a lot of damage in the startup world.

<comment><USER55> The law would do a lot of damage to the startup world if it were enforced as written.

</comment></comment><comment><USER56> I don't have time to read much of the lawsuit, but is Think Computer suing for some sort of injunction to require all the companies listed to use Face Cash as only it has a California Money Transfer Act license?

And for those double taking at the name, Aaron Greenspan is the CEO of Think Computer.

<http://www.thinkcomputer.com/>

<comment><USER37> From reading the complaint, it seems more likely that the expected result here is something like:

* State is forced to fairly enforce the rules that caused Think Computer so much trouble (re money transmitter regulations)

* Fairly enforcing the rules causes incredible amounts of grief & overhead for companies large enough to comply, and drives smaller companies out of business

* The grief drives those larger companies (and investors into the smaller companies) to push for these laws to actually get fixed

I could see there also being an interest here in having investors be penalized for knowingly investing in companies that were violating the law (having a board seat seems like it would give you enough access to realize that a portfolio company is a money transmitter and be able to ask them whether they're licensed).

<comment><USER57> >The grief drives those larger companies (and investors into the smaller companies) to push for these laws to actually get fixed

Huh? The law just got rid of many of their competitors, and they're going to push to change the law?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> I wonder if the smaller companies named in that should just do the absolute minimum and free ride on the HNW and big company/funds who will fight this without being hurt as much by the legal expenses. I know Coinbase raised $5mm, but they shouldn't burn even $250k on this suit. All the individuals are pretty high net worth, at least.

</comment><comment><USER58> Interestingly enough, Stripe and WePay are not named while Balanced and Square are. Can anyone comment on why?

<comment><USER59> 1\. They might actually know what they are doing or 2. they aren't doing payments of the sort that needs this sort of license.

<comment><USER60> Stripe is backed by Wells-Fargo, aren't they?

<comment><USER47> Stripe uses Wells Fargo as an underwriter for the Merchants it on-boards. Wells Fargo did not invest in their earliest rounds but may take an equity stake in later/future rounds.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER61> Who is Aaron Greenspan?

</comment><comment><USER62> On the list USV, a dwolla investor is missing.

</comment><comment><USER63> This doesn't seem as much like an actual attempt to gain compensation as it does to simply get a law changed.

<comment><USER64> I believe you're absolutely correct. It seems rather obvious that he has no standing here, and was not injured by the defendants' actions. But he is extremely knowledgable about these regulations and has a very valid set of complaints regarding the lack of clarity of the law and the lack of predictability in how it is enforced.

</comment></comment><comment><USER65> Well all of those companies are welcome to come move to Miami. Lots of office buildings and land for sale.

</comment><comment><USER66> Who?

</comment><comment><USER67> I can't speak on the legal merits of the case, but this does seem like a direct hit (that, it sounds like, won't work) on VC-istan.

They should start giving him EIR offers. He's earned it several times over. That might be the best way to make everyone happy.

<comment><USER68> He earned what "several times over"?

What logic compels you to conclude that if you get viciously and frivolously sued by someone and publicly badmouthed by him (on his weblog) you should give him a lucrative and prestigious employment (i.e. the Entrepreneur In Residence)?

Do you think a sane SV VC should employ a toxic person that publicly calls Zuckerberg a psychopat?

So far he filed a bunch of frivolous lawsuits against anyone who came into contact with him and looked at him funny. He always represents himself, so there's no cost for him but it hurts the defendants because they have to hire and pay for real lawyers.

His previous lawsuit has been dismissed by the judge <http://www.plainsite.org/flashlight/case.html?id=716057>

His other lawsuit (<http://www.plainsite.org/flashlight/case.html?id=716056>) is in shambles on procedural grounds because his California lawyer wants to withdraw from the case which would leave Greenspan as the only lawyer and, just like in this case, he sues on behalf of his company and a company can't represent itself, so his has to have an outside counsel to proceed.

<comment><USER67> _What logic compels you to conclude that if you get viciously and frivolously sued by someone and publicly badmouthed by him (on his weblog) you should give him a lucrative and prestigious employment (i.e. the Entrepreneur In Residence)?_

Let's start with the fact that his startup (lawsuit) actually does more good for society than 95% of these VC-istan social media companies (that are just excuses to waste young peoples' careers). If nothing else, he's drawing attention to the "we'll fund your competitors if you don't play our way" aspect of VC-istan, pointing out the problems with a law, and one could argue that he's (indirectly) shining light on the VC-istan collusion problem.

I'm not saying that Greenspan deserves to be a billionaire, but he's _way_ past having earned EIR-- if VC-istan were the meritocracy it claims to be. That's an obvious fact at this point.

 _Do you think a sane SV VC should employ a toxic person that publicly calls Zuckerberg a psychopat?_

Wait, so having a disagreement with one powerful person means that someone deserves to be completely blacklisted? Isn't this the kind of antiquated corporate conformity that people went to California (back when it was great; before conformist corporate asshats got in) to escape?

I've been called worse and I, frankly, don't think a person deserves not to have a career just because he says something nasty, about me or anyone. That's just a ridiculous and mean-spirited idea.

 _His other lawsuit (<http://www.plainsite.org/flashlight/case.html?id=716056>) is in shambles on procedural grounds because his California lawyer wants to withdraw from the case which would leave Greenspan as the only lawyer and, just like in this case, he sues on behalf of his company and a company can't represent itself, so his has to have an outside counsel to proceed._

The courage alone that Greenspan has shown proves him to have superior courage to 95+ percent of the VC-istan cool kids, most of whom are useless, morally redundant, corporate shills.

If nothing else, Greenspan has established that he's _intelligent_. That alone confers merit in a world where it can't be assumed.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER69> I sincerely hope this guy kicks the door in at the heart of this financial industry in-crowd fortress.</comment>