everyone wants to underpay the talent and there's only limited amount of talent
the price floor for really talented engineers is also high so high in the sense most startups can't afford those 300-400k salaries.
the price floor for really talented engineers is also high so high in the sense most startups can't afford those 300-400k salaries.
I know a number of folks who work either as developers or on an IT team for a publicly traded company. 300k+ is a stretch but a lot of them pull an extra 30-80k / year more than working at a non-publicly traded company simply because of the stock options they get every year as part of their compensation.
Having publicly traded stock is nice because once you've gotten past the vesting period you can hang onto them for >= 1 year and sell them on demand for 15% long term capital gains tax instead of the usual 35%+ you would have to pay on income tax. Getting an extra 25k to 68k extra post-tax income every year on top of an average dev salary is a big deal.