To be clear, it starts at 150k, presumably because 150k is about 30% less than the total liquid compensation offered to strong new grads by tech companies that take hiring relatively seriously. I’m a little curious how that ends up working for senior candidates who could be getting 450k (which is basically standard comp at those tech companies for senior engineers) - do you just assume that they’d be capable of passing an interview at one of those places if they clear your bar, assuming they don’t work somewhere like that already? I think if you start asking people to, say, provide offer letters demonstrating their “market value”, you run the risk of someone looking at their options and then changing their mind. Or worse, the thought that they might need to undergo interviews with a bunch of companies they don’t even want to work at just to avoid leaving money on the table (beyond the 30% they’re willingly giving up) might dissuade someone from applying at all.
Note: I actually think offering 30% below industry rates is an interesting and not-obviously-wrong idea. For one thing, I do think that it serves as a useful filter for the type of person you want to be working with on mission-aligned projects. For another, it’s still substantially more than you’d make in pretty much any other non-profit context. I just think the way the number is decided should be made more legible to potential candidates, to avoid preemptively scaring anyone off. If it’s as simple as “we’ll take 30% off top-of-market from what a candidate with your skillset & experience could get, i.e. at FAANG/similar”, then it’s probably best just to say that and save everyone the headache.
I’m a little curious how that ends up working for senior candidates who could be getting 450k (which is basically standard comp at those tech companies for senior engineers) - do you just assume that they’d be capable of passing an interview at one of those places if they clear your bar, assuming they don’t work somewhere like that already?
I am not fully sure yet what the right algorithm here will be, since we haven’t run into that problem yet. My guess is I would try to call in a third party to give me a guess of how much they could make in industry, or we just negotiate a bit back-and-forth and they just tell me the evidence they have for how much they could make in industry if they tried. I can also imagine this turning out to be harder, and I would have to think more about how to best get a fair assessment here.
I think if you start asking people to, say, provide offer letters demonstrating their “market value”, you run the risk of someone looking at their options and then changing their mind.
This seems like a fine outcome to me. Indeed, in the past I have told past LW/Lightcone employees to really try to look for other options and take them seriously, even after I made them an offer, so that if they do decide to take the offer we both felt confident that working at LW/Lightcone is the best choice for them.
Thanks, appreciate the response! My worries are mostly modeled on a hypothetical version of myself in that situation, so I don’t know how they generalize.
For what it’s worth I’d happily take a 30% paycut to work at an aligned org; it’s moving to the Bay that’s not currently in the cards. I agree that colocation is desirable for people & teams that are “actually trying” so I understand why remote work isn’t on the table, though I think Jacob’s idea to have offices in other major metros is interesting, assuming you get to a scale where that makes sense.
For what it’s worth I actually don’t buy at all that “colocation is desirable for people & teams that are ‘actually trying’.” I’ve worked with dozens of organizations as a strategy consultant over the past decade, during which time I’ve gotten to see a number of different office configurations ranging from 100% place-based to fully virtual and many gradations in between. While this is anecdata, I personally haven’t noticed any correlation whatsoever between the office setup and the effectiveness of the team. I think there are plenty of people who don’t need to be in an office to do their best work and if you have a team of people like that, then you don’t need an office, period.
(Edited to add: I recognize that organizations can have all sorts of reasons for preferring an in-person presence; I was just objecting to the “actually trying” frame. I’ve seen too many 100% virtual teams accomplish incredible things, especially over the past year, to believe that colocation is more than a minor auxiliary factor in facilitating achievement.)
Yeah, but $150K...
(Maybe I don’t understand just how expensive the Bay Area is, but $150K sounds like an awful lot.
To be clear, it starts at 150k, presumably because 150k is about 30% less than the total liquid compensation offered to strong new grads by tech companies that take hiring relatively seriously. I’m a little curious how that ends up working for senior candidates who could be getting 450k (which is basically standard comp at those tech companies for senior engineers) - do you just assume that they’d be capable of passing an interview at one of those places if they clear your bar, assuming they don’t work somewhere like that already? I think if you start asking people to, say, provide offer letters demonstrating their “market value”, you run the risk of someone looking at their options and then changing their mind. Or worse, the thought that they might need to undergo interviews with a bunch of companies they don’t even want to work at just to avoid leaving money on the table (beyond the 30% they’re willingly giving up) might dissuade someone from applying at all.
Note: I actually think offering 30% below industry rates is an interesting and not-obviously-wrong idea. For one thing, I do think that it serves as a useful filter for the type of person you want to be working with on mission-aligned projects. For another, it’s still substantially more than you’d make in pretty much any other non-profit context. I just think the way the number is decided should be made more legible to potential candidates, to avoid preemptively scaring anyone off. If it’s as simple as “we’ll take 30% off top-of-market from what a candidate with your skillset & experience could get, i.e. at FAANG/similar”, then it’s probably best just to say that and save everyone the headache.
I am not fully sure yet what the right algorithm here will be, since we haven’t run into that problem yet. My guess is I would try to call in a third party to give me a guess of how much they could make in industry, or we just negotiate a bit back-and-forth and they just tell me the evidence they have for how much they could make in industry if they tried. I can also imagine this turning out to be harder, and I would have to think more about how to best get a fair assessment here.
This seems like a fine outcome to me. Indeed, in the past I have told past LW/Lightcone employees to really try to look for other options and take them seriously, even after I made them an offer, so that if they do decide to take the offer we both felt confident that working at LW/Lightcone is the best choice for them.
Thanks, appreciate the response! My worries are mostly modeled on a hypothetical version of myself in that situation, so I don’t know how they generalize.
For what it’s worth I’d happily take a 30% paycut to work at an aligned org; it’s moving to the Bay that’s not currently in the cards. I agree that colocation is desirable for people & teams that are “actually trying” so I understand why remote work isn’t on the table, though I think Jacob’s idea to have offices in other major metros is interesting, assuming you get to a scale where that makes sense.
For what it’s worth I actually don’t buy at all that “colocation is desirable for people & teams that are ‘actually trying’.” I’ve worked with dozens of organizations as a strategy consultant over the past decade, during which time I’ve gotten to see a number of different office configurations ranging from 100% place-based to fully virtual and many gradations in between. While this is anecdata, I personally haven’t noticed any correlation whatsoever between the office setup and the effectiveness of the team. I think there are plenty of people who don’t need to be in an office to do their best work and if you have a team of people like that, then you don’t need an office, period.
(Edited to add: I recognize that organizations can have all sorts of reasons for preferring an in-person presence; I was just objecting to the “actually trying” frame. I’ve seen too many 100% virtual teams accomplish incredible things, especially over the past year, to believe that colocation is more than a minor auxiliary factor in facilitating achievement.)