TC 200K, 4 YoE, SF I joined a startup as employee #4. C-suites trust me with many things and they appointed me as acting hiring manager for our engineering team. I see candidates with 250K+ asking TC who generally have more YoE but less experience in our technology stack. C-suites think I'm doing a fantastic job and I'm "close" to getting promoted to a Technical Program Manager / Engineering Manager. I've exceeded and gone above the call of duty, but lately feeling burnt out with this carrot-on-a-stick. My compensation was calculated pre-series B, and these candidates are post-series B. I feel my compensation lags those of the pool of candidates we are hiring. Do I go to C-suites asking for raise? Generally, do Engineering Manager's TC exceed those that they hire? Thinking of just leetcoding and joining a FANG, but enjoy the autonomy in my startup.
Coding engineer are in more demand then non-coding managers, have you stopped coding? If yes go back to it, if no make yourself ready with an option to walk away, then negotiate from a better negotiating ground and walk away if things don’t change
Not true. An effective non-coding manager is a force multiplier and tend to be compensated accordingly. It's been a long time since one of my reports has had a higher TC than me, although it's not unheard of.
Thanks for the advise. I code 50% of the time, and 50% spent on managing engineers, completing PoCs for our customers, hiring, and other stuff.
Ask for raise and stock uninhibitedly. I have seen this story before. Unless you stand up for your comp, things will move at their own pace.
Ask for a raise. Worst case scenario is they say no.
Should I first acquire competing offers and ask for a raise for leverage? Doesn’t that leave a bad taste in people’s mouths?
You don't need a competing offer to deserve more money. In their mind, they could give you a raise so that you DONT want to interview around