[yapcguy]

The CEO just had a higher price than most other people.

To get $16bn cash from Facebook is hilarious.

Next time a start-up says they won't pay you market rate because of x, y, and z just walk away and laugh. For the sake of a few thousand dollars in wages, you could make them billions.

Don't work for cheap bastards. Funny how engineers are supposed to sacrifice yet we never see a lawyer or accountant charge below market rates, and their work can save businesses millions as well as jail-time.

[kamaal]

I now feel like a jack ass for working at a MegaCorp. To be working like a donkey under a glorified email router paid 3x more than me for doing toothbrush factory era supervisors role.

And yes I do agree with you. I recently rejected a offer from a start up for offering 50% below market rate.

Seems like I made a smart decision.

[curun1r]

WhatsApp is actually the reason why people accept less than market rate from startups. No WhatsApp employee who's been there more than a year will ever need to work again once he/she survives the "golden handcuffs" period.

[yapcguy]

I'm sure that's what Zynga employees thought too. Sure, accept less than your market rate, but there are lots of trapdoors before the cash ends up in your bank account.

[michaelmior]

I think it's quite rare that any individual employee (probably excluding founders) is responsible for a significant percentage of the value of a company.

[DerpDerpDerp]

I mean, if you assume only 10% of that value is going to employees, then you need only half a percent (0.5%) of that to get a $800k bonus.

If you've only been there 2-3 years, that's a substantial bonus that pushes your pay above market rate.

[United857]

What's remarkable is that they've built up a strong engineering team without very much media attention in Silicon Valley to cultivate a "hot startup everyone wants to work for" image.

The opposite of Facebook, Google, Twitter, Dropbox, Palantir, etc...