[seanconaty]

For most companies, the amount of money represented by the difference in salary of 2 employees is negligible. (Definitely not negligible for the employees!) It's not even a blip on the cash flow statement. This is especially true of venture-backed startups whose operating model is going-for-broke.

What this means is that a person has a price that he or she can command and it's based less on their work experience/abilities and more on their experience of getting paid: they get used to a certain standard of living. If a company wants to hire a person, it will need to meet or beat that standard.

So yeah, the longer a person has been in the workforce, the more they are probably getting paid. But even this can vary from person to person, depending on how the person has been managing his or her salary and what companies he or she has worked at.

"Experience" is a proxy for technical ability and expected standard of living.

Usually a company will decide if it wants to hire a person, first. If yes, they start to negotiate pay based on a bunch of factors. Really, it's two parties trying to find each others' comfort zone; there isn't a formula. Sometimes there is no middle ground and no hire happens. Sometimes, to save time, recruiters will probe you to find your comfort zone before they even interview. Most of the time, if a company decides it wants to hire you, it will do what it can to make that happen. It's the desire to win.

If the candidate is a no-hire, there is no negotiation, he can't say "what if I work for less!"

Other factors that bear on salary:

* What are the current market conditions? When you were hired? * What is the rate of job churn? * Salary versus equity * Location * Employee demand: well known companies and probably pay less because more people want to work there. * What does your boss make? Can't make more than her * Name recognition on your resume. Did you go to Stanford? Did you work at Google? * Signing bonus?

When I was younger this used to upset me. I guess I got over it as started to get paid more. But I realize that getting paid a personal and psychological endeavor, not a simple mathematical formula.

I caveat all this by saying I'm an engineer in SF in 2015: shit's crazy.