At a startup with 15 employees I'd guess around 13 are engineers (or engineer related: developers, designers, product, etc.). So wouldn't that mean startups should have a higher burn rate if they are tech heavy?

If you consider an average engineer has a loaded cost of $250k per year and you have 13 of them, that means your monthly burn rate would be $270k before accounting for the other 2 employees (most likely founders taking a much smaller salary). This would also be a conservative estimate based on an average salary of $100k (which is barely scraping by in NYC and SF if you're straight out of college with loans).

So this must mean startups spending less that $250k with 15 + employees are paying well under market rate (by at least $20-$50k)? But that also wouldn't correspond with the salaries being offered via Angel list and Glassdoor. So something isn't lining up here.