Ask HN: Should an experienced engineer join a startup?

> around $0.9M-$1.2M per year today

Like others have said this salary should make not want to leave.

I make around $1.5M at a startup. I think I can get around $350k at regular job. Even if you consider a generous 20% of startups that gonna to make it, I need to make more than $1.75M in income to justify the risk of a startup.

Doing the same math for your $1M salary, it means you need to make at least $5M per year to adjust for risk.

lol wtf.. you make a million a year.. i have worked at startups my whole career and the best one, that succeeded big and turned my options into valuable stock years later, the annual comp was like $350k. No, you're probably never ever going to get even close to a $1M/year at a startup. If money is your main motivation, a startup will probably never make sense.

I do agree early engineers get pretty terrible deals w.r.t equity compared to founders or investors, but that's to be expected IMO. A startup does not have the structure in place to plug in an engineer and crank out tens of millions of extra revenue. They typically don't have extremely complex technical problems that need a highly specialized engineer. They need to solve simple problems quickly and a $1M engineer no matter how good is not going to outcompete a team of 5 $200k engineers.

I've seen a bunch of people saying your financial calculations are correct, but I disagree. One person pointed out "why are you saying the optimistic side?"

This _can_ be calculated, and it doesn't seem like you are applying realistic probabilities. This is pretty routine in value investing when you are trying to value a company.

In essence, you multiply the probability of each possible valuation by the valuation, and then sum them up over the expected number of years.

Here's a quick calculator I threw together with possible scenarios what you can modify: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/e/2PACX-1vTox68rXDr1r...

At the end of the day, it's a risk reward tradeoff, this can help put things in the correct picture for what you're after. Startups have been said a number of times _do not_ give you the best odds for making money.

Investors, often because they start earlier in the company, are trading more risk for higher possible payoff.

Make sure that you don't delude yourself with probabilities, get actual base rates (how many startups fail in 5 years? How many go public?), and if you have insight to believe this is different, then you should modify that base rate.

I suppose the other way to look at it is if your'e making $1M/year now, and living anywhere close to like a "normal" person, you have put enough away in the bank/investments that now you can easily afford to do whatever you want without worrying about money, without getting paid at all. You are in the position where you can choose what you want to do, with the money not even being an issue. So why even worry about the pay at a startup? If it's something exciting you want to do, go for it.

But if you're happy where you are, and/or primarily motivated by money... what's even leading you to consider these offers, why even ask? If you're hoping to make even more money at a startup, the discussion here seems to say "unlikely, unless you get lucky".

I'd make enough to retire, and afterwards work part time for fun.

I would never join a startup to get rich. Just doesn't work out most of the time.