This is actually a pretty interesting tool. Not sure how accurate it is, since its telling me I should be making the same salary I've made at large corporations the last two years.
Based on the interviewing I've been doing, most of the start-ups around here (Midwest) were offering close to 30-40K less than my corporate gigs.
In SF Bay area, my experience in the last year or so has been that salary comp is pretty much the same between start-ups and big companies, the only exception being super-early-stage startups (i.e. pre-series A) where they really don't have the money yet. The difference is that at bigco, they add bonus and equity grant that have real value, while at startup, they add some % of equity with unknown value. Companies like Amazon and Netflix are also different because they adjust the base salary up to compensate for their different equity award policies.
Yeah, I think I misspoke somewhat, but not entirely. The Amazon comp structure, at least for the first four years after you join, as far as I know is something like this (and take this with a grain of salt, I haven't worked there):
Y1: Base + large annual cash (non-perf) bonus + 5% stock vest + optional perf stock bonus
Y2: Base + large annual cash (non-perf) bonus + 15% stock vest + optional perf stock bonus
Y3: Base + 40% stock vest + optional perf stock bonus
Y4: Base + 40% stock vest + optional perf stock bonus
So yeah, they don't adjust the base upward, but they do give you extra cash in the first two years to compensate for their back-loaded stock vesting schedule. That's what I meant.
Based on the interviewing I've been doing, most of the start-ups around here (Midwest) were offering close to 30-40K less than my corporate gigs.