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3 months agoI’ve been in engineering leadership in early and mid stage start ups in San Francisco for a number of years. Comp varies a bit (the earlier stage the company the more ISO equity I get - for anybody not familiar these are options that are basically worth nothing but in the event of an exit opportunity might be worth tremendously more - vs working for a public company you’d often get RSUs that you could immediately sell or divest) but base in the low 300s. This is in the bay area, so actual purchasing power when compared to cost of living is more like mid 100s elsewhere in the US.
I moved to the bay area in 2012, absolutely hated Musk back then and thought all of his success was hanging onto other’s coattails and good timing (which fair enough, is a skill + huge privilege in and of itself, but isn’t the same as inventing/engineering) but he was really popular here. He continued to reveal himself to be more and more of a shitheel over the years and I got to slowly see everybody I knew and worked with eventually come around to the same opinion I had held for more than a decade.