Who do you report to? Did they discuss these hires with you? If you have a good relationship with the founder, you should frankly express what you'd like your trajectory to be and come up with a plan to make it happen. If this isn't something you can discuss with your founder or whoever you report to, then you should look for a better place to work that is willing to listen to you and to help you grow.
Ask HN: What's left for early startup engineers as the company grows?
21–30 of 193 posts
Re: Ask HN: What's left for early startup engineers as the company grows?
#22Is there a certain role you feel you were overlooked for - VP of engineering? Manager? Or did you want to continue being an engineer? If it was the former, the time to voice your desire has probably passed. If it's the latter - and you really do just like writing code but want some sort of recognition - well, take the money I assume you'll earn and think of that as recognition.
Re: Ask HN: What's left for early startup engineers as the company grows?
#23You've got a bunch of options, depending on your interests and skills.
You could be a repository-of-lore brilliant coder / guru. Sounds like this is roughly what the CEO has carved out for you right now.
You could be CTO/Head of Engineering. You may or may not want this job or be suited to it, based on what you've said so far.
You could sink down into the organization as a (hopefully) really rich mid-level engineer and enjoy the ride.
You could do it again as a founder rather than early employee somewhere else.
I think you should figure out what would be best for you, what you want, and then see if the CEO agrees and will make it happen. At some level, if you're a few years into vesting, and the company is successful, it may not significantly change your financial outcome to stay -- you have early stage stock in a successful startup. More could be nice, but it won't change your outcome 10 or 100x, like moving to a founder role would.
Lots of good options; just don't do the west coast thing and stew on it while you write increasingly bitter tweets and blog posts. :) Today is a great day to get some clarity!
Re: Ask HN: What's left for early startup engineers as the company grows?
#24Interesting question you might ask yourself, do you want to be in management or not? Do you want to be customer facing? Or not?
When companies are small the jobs are all blends because they have to be, you just don't have the resources to do more. But as the company gets bigger (presumably through growth and not just a funding bump :-) you can allow folks to focus full time on specific roles which, in theory, gets you better execution of those roles.
A friend of mine once said you often could figure out what role you liked "best" by the first thing you did when you got in, did you check the build? (developer) did you check email? (manager) did you check the web? (marketer) A bit simplistic but it does make for interesting introspection.
As employee #2 you're well connected with the CEO and the other founders, and you can talk about what you want in your future. You should sit down and have that talk with them.
Re: Ask HN: What's left for early startup engineers as the company grows?
#25Leave. Be pragmatic: there will be other opportunities which are equally interesting and staying isn't helping. You could be CTO at a different startup. Further, you should be approximately at your zenith at the company and they should be able to provide a strong reference, if you stay dissatisfied your performance and appearance will suffer - along with your potential for future employment. Also happiness is about t…
> Leave. If he's got options, they'll be vesting -- typically over a 4yr period. He's 2yrs in so if he decides to leave, then he'll lose half of them. If he's willing to do that, then he'll have to exercise what he already has vested. Does he even have the cash to do that? It's easy to suggest that people just 'move on' but it's important to remember the context.
>If he's willing to do that, then he'll have to exercise what he already has vested.
Not necessarily. It depends on the terms of his or her options grant. Many companies give employees a 10 year exercise period after they leave (advocated by Sam Altman: http://blog.samaltman.com/employee-equity).
Re: Ask HN: What's left for early startup engineers as the company grows?
#26Could be worse. I know someone who was an early employee of a startup. She had the desk nearest the front door, so she ended up being the receptionist. Five years later, she's still the receptionist.
Re: Ask HN: What's left for early startup engineers as the company grows?
#27Earlier quoted context omitted.
Very easy to say, but if you have significant equity (which, as employee #2, you really should) it's a lot more difficult to just step away. "The journey" is all very well, but if that journey involves checking out for a year while you wait for a payout then so be it.
> if you have significant equity (which, as employee #2, you really should) That's the big unknown here. If he does have significant equity (even 2.5% or more is good), then what's the problem. He gets to share the long-term benefits without any of the stressful responsibilities and can be solely devoted to doing what he's best at. If a brief mention on About Us page is all he cares about, bring it up at your next re…
I'd be surprised if he has any "equity". He may have options, but that is a significantly different thing. Most onerously of course is that if he leaves he will likely have to shell out actual cash on a lottery ticket. Who knows if he can afford to do this, or if it makes sense to do this.
That is a long way of saying, under almost any reasonable scenario, whether he has significant options (vested or no) should not be the determining factor on if he should stay.
He should stay if it he enjoys the job, they are compensating him enough in real compensation to overcome his lack of enjoyment, or he doesn't have other job opportunities.
I will say, as a long term employee (though to be fair, it's not that long term) he should have the ability to more forcefully outline what he wants to continue with the company. If he doesn't, either he's fooling himself about his real value, or he is doing a poor job communicating it to the company. In either case, it's his issue.
Re: Ask HN: What's left for early startup engineers as the company grows?
#28The main question I have, which I don't see addressed in your description: do you have a meaningful equity stake commensurate with the contributions you perceive you made?
You might need to adopt the "owner's" mentality - which is that as long as these people are growing the value of the company, you are free to focus on what you enjoy the most, while they work to make your equity more valuable.
That said - if your contributions in all these areas are truly valuable, at a small company, there's always a case to be made for someone to be spanning functional areas, if they have the expertise and chops to add value. Probably worth a conversation internally. As others have said, assert yourself a bit.
Re: Ask HN: What's left for early startup engineers as the company grows?
#29The rub with startups is that leadership may not have experience with developing careers. From what you've written, it seems like you really don't have a lot of experience developing careers either, which is one reason to bring in an experienced engineering manager. It's not a knock on your skillset managing a 10 person team and delivering. Just a realization that management isn't something you can just quickly learn…
Agree with this advice. You should talk to your manager and work out a plan to achieve your career goals within the company. This is a significant part of your manager's job responsibilities, and assuming they are good a good manager, then they will be more than happy to work with you on this. You are obviously an important part of the organization and if they have any common sense, they will want to retain you. And if, for some reason, it turns out there is no good way to grow within the organization, then start weighing the pros and cons of leaving.
Also, remember that transitioning into a management role is an advancement only if you want to be a manager. It's a career change, and is not suited for everyone. This is why many tech companies have pure developer track advancement opportunities.
Re: Ask HN: What's left for early startup engineers as the company grows?
#30This seems relevant: http://jacquesmattheij.com/first-employee-or-cofounder although in this specific case it's not much help.
I think ChuckMcM's advice of chatting with the founders a bit sounds good. You could try and spin it in a positive way... "I was doing all this stuff, and even if it was really crazy at times, I felt like I was growing a lot and contributing a lot, and I feel like I'd like to continue that somehow. What do you think?"