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Comment by HexDecOctBin | Hacker News Reader

> You simply can't pay 100 people a salary and stay under $1M. Maybe 12 people, or $10M would be a better balance.

As someone from a third-world country, I don't know whether to laugh or cry. I suspect that other than the hyper-inflated salaries in silicon valley, these metrics will be more than fair everywhere else.

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Nope, one million is 10k a year per employee. That’s low even in Poland and definitely well, well below Polish IT, and Europe in general makes a fraction of SV salaries.

Those numbers are a bad match.

Poland is not a third world country though.

ok now try India

Poland is poor by standards of Western Europe (or USA).

It is not so poor by global standards.

Sure, but parent suggested SV bias here, which is not the case.

10k USD a year is a reasonable salary in some third-world countries, on Brazil the minimum wage is about 2600 USD a year

But the business will have other expenses besides salary (rent on a building, providing developers with machines, etc), so you would be down to 7k USD per year or lower for an 100-employee company to break even with only $1M/year revenue.

That's not what qualified developers make in Brazil. It's quite a bit more than $2600 per month.

Edit: clarity

The license doesn't say 100 full-time employee positions throughout the year. It says anyone who's been an employee or contractor during any part of the year. Did I pay someone $200 for an hour of consulting? That counts. Did I have an unpaid intern for 120 hours of work? That counts. Did I hire a bunch of work done somewhere else in the world for $5 an hour? Each of those people count. Did I pay a receptionist to man an office 20 hours a week at minimum wage? That counts.

Employees cost more than just their salaries. I doubt there's any software-based business anywhere in the US with more than ~6-8 employees on $1m revenue.

$1M is $10k per employee, which is (in the USA) below the federal poverty line (i.e. not inflated SV numbers) of $12,880. Just working full time (≥35 hours a week) at the federal minimum wage ($7.25/hour) puts you over $13k.

You couldn't pay 100 people minimum wage many places in Europe on that amount.

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