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With ever increasing frequency, there seems to be more and more of these "What's your annual salary?" posts.<p>Hacker News used to be the place for startup news / startup info sharing/ tips & tricks, etc. If you are joining a startup, you should expect to lose the salary game every time. You shouldn't be in it for the salary but the thrill of exploring the unknown, paving your own path, building something amazing, etc.<p>These salary posts emphasize the Silicon Valley mindset that salary largely defines your identity in this community. Facebook, Google, and Twitter continue to push engineer salaries to astronomic levels and that is fine - however those aren't startups.<p>I'm a Founder / CEO of a venture backed startup, https://www.tindie.com, and I have the lowest salary on our team of 5 engineers. My salary is probably a joke to most of you - and thats how it should be.<p>We're in it for the long run. We want to build somethings great. Shake things up. No where in that equation does annual salary have a bit of importance to me.<p>So can we all agree these salary posts are just blowing smoke and get back to work?
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I don't like the salary survey posts because I doubt their validity, and haven't voted them up.<p>But I can't say I'm a fan of your reasoning here. Software developers are probably poorly served by the idea that they should be accepting lower income in the service of building up the ideas of their employers.<p>Annual salary is not "blowing smoke"; it's a tremendously important consideration.