161–170 of 193 posts
Maybe it's a psychological thing, but really good engineers are never employee #1-5 at a startup. They just aren't.
Early employees of a startup are in a rotten deal. They took slightly less risk than the founders, similar pay cut, but with order of magnitude less equity, and with more work in designing and building the product, running operation, doing marketing, and selling to customers. When the company goes under, their loss is the same as the founders. When the company does well and scales up, their positions and roles will b…
As a co-founder, I didn't take a salary until a year into the startup (same with my other two co-founders). Even when we received our accelerator funding, all of it went towards our first hire's (an engineer) salary and operating expenses. At this point, our risk was significantly higher, not slightly. If the company didn't succeed, I can tell you our first hire was next in line for a cushy market job, and he was being actively poached, not us.
After we graduated the accelerator we raised a ~$1M seed round. We hired more two early team members at market salaries. Each of the co-founders were taking $33K salaries. Why? We wanted the budget to hire great people. So no, definitely not a similar pay cut. In fact, it's increasingly hard for early stage startups to hire good talent at less than market rates because there are plenty of amazing startups hiring above market. Our risk at this stage was even higher, because failing would burn most of our bridges with our new investors (maybe a couple wouldn't hold it against us), where as if our engineers went on to start something, no investor would think twice about their history working at a failed VC-funded startup.
We didn't increase our salaries again until we were generating revenue. Even now, three years in, I'm taking $20K less than the starting salary for a junior person in the role I have. While I want to increase that a little more as our revenue grows, I don't think it's fair to take a market salary at our stage.
And I won't even begin to dignify early employees do "more work in designing and building the product, running operation, doing marketing, and selling to customers" with an answer.
I'm not complaining, but to say being an early employee is a rotten deal is unfair. If our startup goes under, I definitely have the more rotten deal. It only looks like I had the better deal if we succeed.
And if you want to start a startup, you should, that's the only way you'll know how truly hard it is.
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You are describing bad management. You don't need skills to be a bad anything. There are plenty of bad programmers going around who don't actually have any useful skills either. There is a particular set of skills involved in not getting fired even though you don't actually have any skills. However, this skillset will not save you if the company institutes blanket layoffs or goes out of business, nor if you ever need…
Most companies have bad management. I would go so far as to call it the norm. You're obviously better off with skills. I never said you weren't. But you don't absolutely need them to be an effective manager of other people's efforts. In fact one of the best ways is to just get the hell out of their way.
One of the fundamental purposes of management is to help other people get the hell out of your way. In software, the purpose of a manager is very often to stare down requests and reject them on your behalf because you're busy doing something more important.
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Try to join when stock has low paper value, exercise the options immediately so there is no gain and no tax. Then you vest shares, rather than options, and can take them with you.
Not that many startups allow 83-b elections early on. It costs them a few $k when someone does this. It doesn't necessarily have to (it's just paper filed with the IRS by the employee), but that's what they're told and that's what they went through when they did their own 83-b paperwork. So that's what they think everyone needs to do. Honestly, there really aren't any legally required paperwork involved with 83-b, bu…
I am currently in a similar boat as you.
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> Why is it acceptable for the Founder/CEO to continue leading the company at 40+ employees but not acceptable for the engineer to lead an engineering team at 40+ employees? Seems like a double standard. It is a double standard, but however it's hardly that cut and dry. Post Series B, if the board does not believe the current Founder/CEO can take the company to the next milestones of growth, they will replace them. T…
The board is just a bunch of old white dudes with money. The fuck do they know? EDIT: balls187 suggests they know how to make money--which is perhaps true, but not necessarily in your field of endeavor or business, unless you've picked them. kelnos is closer to it, which is that the board tells you what to do because they're the board and that's the power you've granted them. Again, in neither case, do we actually ne…
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As a founder I manage various teams full-time. I don't consider myself to be a manager because ultimately I don't report to anyone, but I disagree with most of what you're describing. Skills - You may have only worked with bad managers because to be a good manager, much like anything else, requires certain abilities. While some have those it's practice and experience that make you really good. > You can't wire up a h…
> Really? Don't you feel behaving in such a way won't help the company you're helping build? You're helping the company by meeting your expectations and goals, which are set by your higher-ups who have clawed their own way up the hierarchy and so are presumed to know what they're doing. So long as you're doing that, you're a good employee. What you do with the rest of your time is up to you. Certainly don't start wor…
You become a entrepreneur, you network and get hired directly into a position(Cofounder). You get into finance, and enter VC/Private equity firms so you get placed on boards etc
So i don't assume that the top people, are the best skilled.
As a technical founder I actually face the issue on the other side, which is how to keep those that have been around for 5+ years challenged and motivated. Here are a few things I've learned that might help with perspective: 1. You shouldn't be afraid to ask for what you want. As a founder, it's tough to always know what goes on in everyone's mind. I try as much as I can but when I'm a part of the conversation I will…
It took me awhile to realize that management is, generally, not a skilled profession. Not saying that certain skills can make you better or worse at it, but that you don't need them to be effective. In a skilled profession, not having them means all the difference. You can't wire up a house without the skills. You can't build a web app without knowing a whole lot of stuff, at least not within any time frame someone w…
Also bare in mind that this is a normal process for SOME companies as the more they grow the more people are hired so as to try and achieve more (this is debatable) work thus higher revenues.
Personally, I would see what you really want from life and if you are seeking credit/appreciation for your own work then
start a new business or co-found a product or join a startup that is prepared to give out equity