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Help wanted: $183K plus. Tool gives lowdown on tech salaries

Anyone who works in tech is going to like this. Wealthfront, an online financial adviser based in Palo Alto, Calif., today rolled out an interactive tool (see below) that let's you see what tech jobs pay among private firms across the country.

You'll learn, for instance, that software architects make more than managers -- a mean of $183,000 a year plus equity compared with $163,000 plus stock -- and that cash compensation across all tech companies is $112,000. Another curious finding: Despite the huge demand for engineers in Silicon Valley, jobs in the northeast pay … Read more

Square perks up, now handles $8B in payments a year

Square is growing by leaps, bounds, and venti lattes.

The payment-processing company, which allows merchants to swipe cards with a device connected to mobile devices, today announced that it's now handling $8 billion in transactions every year. Just a year ago, that figure stood at over $1 billion, and earlier this year, Square CEO Jack Dorsey said the company was processing $4 billion in transactions per year.

That growth has meant far more revenue for Square. Although the company doesn't divulge its financials, it takes a fee of 2.75 percent for each card swipe through its service. … Read more

Shimi: Your personal robotic DJ

Tovbot, a startup that wants a future full of personal robotic assistants, has launched a Kickstarter campaign for Shimi, which is auditioning to be your own personal robotic DJ.

The robot -- created by roboticists from Georgia Tech, MIT, and IDC -- takes advantage of smartphone technology to play music and pick songs based on your taste or mood.

It's essentially a cute, shiny dancing robot that performs a Pandora-like service and costs $199 (unless you help fund it through Kickstarter -- it's going for as low as $129 there).

"We want it to be your little musical companion," co-founder Gil Weinberg said at TechCrunch Disrupt today during the conference's startup battlefield segment. … Read more

Square's Jack Dorsey to tech founders: Question everything

SAN FRANCISCO -- Square and Twitter founder Jack Dorsey said today that founders must be willing to accept new ideas -- which can come from anywhere -- if they want their companies to evolve and to keep disrupting existing industries.

Opening his keynote address at TechCrunch Disrupt here today, Dorsey noted that he didn't grow up wanting to be an entrepreneur. Now that he's helped start two of the most important companies in Silicon Valley, though, Dorsey said he wanted to share some of the lessons he's learned during his career, ideas that he clearly thinks can … Read more

Ben Horowitz: I feel your IPO pain, Facebook

SAN FRANCISCO -- Venture Capitalist Ben Horowitz, half of the powerful Andreessen Horowitz duo, talked about how a lousy performing IPO -- are you listening, Mark Zuckerberg? -- can be a wrenching experience.

"The biggest pressure is on the employees who go home and someone in their family says, 'I read in the paper that you guys are bunch of idiots'," said Horowitz, who was interviewed at Techcrunch Disrupt by Silicon Valley veteran Bill Campbell. "It's a really hard thing to take."

Horowitz was talking about his experience as CEO of LoudCloud, a 1990s-era company … Read more

AngelList attacks another startup pain point: Legal fees

AngelList -- a booming site where angel investors find tech startups to back -- is rolling out a product today that should please a lot of would-be Mark Zuckerbergs and, in theory, worry a lot of lawyers.

Ultimately, it could help both.

The site, founded in early 2010 by entrepreneurs/angel investors Naval Ravikant and Babak Nivi, is now offering standardized online documents that will make it faster and cheaper for any of the thousands of startups on AngelList to close their first round of funding.

AngelList Docs, as it's called, breaks down the money-raising paperwork process in a … Read more

Would you like a patent search with your recruiting tool?

If you thought patents were intruding into the tech industry just a wee bit too much, brace yourself. Now they can be part of the recruiting process.

TalentBin, a San Francisco startup that scrapes social media sites ranging from Quora to Twitter in order to index hiring prospects for recruiters, has added the U.S. Office's patent database to the sources it scours for information on prospective employees.

Call it novel or horrifying, but I can see how it would be useful for recruiters, particularly in areas like biotech and manufacturing. And, yes, software, though you could argue that … Read more

With Pinpointing, Zappos hooks up Pinterest with e-commerce

Amazon's online shoe seller Zappos is combining the popularity of Pinterest with its own products in a new service.

Dubbed Pinpointing, the service delivers Zappos products based on what a user has pinned. In addition, the service will list products that had been pinned recently. Pinpointing lists a host of product categories, including shoes, skirts, dresses, and jeans.

In order to take advantage of the features, users can enter their own Pinterest username to see what sort of Zappos recommendations might relate to their previously pinned items. They can also input another person's username to see recommendations based … Read more

Entrepreneur sees tech startup potential in Arab world

In a region plagued by religious tensions and violent political strife, Silicon Valley entrepreneur Nima Adelkhani sees economic opportunity.

Through Progress in Technology Middle East, a company that launches today, Adelkhani plans to connect startups in the Arab world with the American technology industry's movers and shakers, part of a larger plan to help a fledgling ecosystem grow and foster stability in the area.

But let's be clear -- Adelkhani doesn't see any of the 27 businesses he is working with as charity cases. These are ideas that bring him goosebumps because he believes they are original … Read more