I've worked at multiple startups and feel it isn't worth the effort. The execs always make out and everyone else doesn't make it worth their effort. The compensation will be better when working at established companies.
Ask HN: Pros and cons of working at a startup in 2018?
221–230 of 968 posts
Re: Ask HN: Pros and cons of working at a startup in 2018?
#222One thought experiment is to take your hypothetical market rate, and calculate the opportunity cost of working at the startup. Then think if you had that cost over say 5 years, in hard cash, would you take it and invest in the equity of that startup over other options?
Re: Ask HN: Pros and cons of working at a startup in 2018?
#223Just a few cons.... The big players have drastically pushed up developer comp. The "maybe" money that might come from a best-case startup exit isn't holding up well against the RSUs of the big players. I have friends pushing total comp north of 400K / year at the usual suspect companies. Over a five-year-span-till-liquidity your "maybe" money is competing against a near-guaranteed $2M in comp. Equity grants for early…
The math on this is even more direct, as you can take the differential in salary and invest directly into early stage companies that interest you, trading technical advising for access to seed rounds. You often end up with more equity (on better terms) than you would have had as an early employee, with less risk.
I am interested in this. Where does one find these opportunities for early stage investment?
Re: Ask HN: Pros and cons of working at a startup in 2018?
#224Earlier quoted context omitted.
Often I find a number of great engineers that the big 5 disqualify for two main reasons: Location or Education. The big 5 tend to not allow remote work and if you don't have a college degree it's often hella hard to get an interview.
But the Big5 have tons of locations. Amazon in particular has tech centers in places like Phoenix and Detroit, while Google is in Chicago. Microsoft is even in Fargo! Unless you want to be a digital nomad I guess. Then it’s probably not ideal, but I do know some fully remote positions exist at the L6 level at Amazon.
> But the Big5 have tons of locations
Name one Big5 job in the entire U.S. south. Or at least one that pays as well as them.
There aren’t any.
Re: Ask HN: Pros and cons of working at a startup in 2018?
#225I have a https://www.workatastartup.com/ question: What happens, if you work for a YC company and want to work at another one? Do they still see your looking?
At the moment, yes - and we know this is a huge issue. I don't recommend using it if you are working at a YC company at the moment. We're fixing this in the next week.
Re: Ask HN: Pros and cons of working at a startup in 2018?
#226Earlier quoted context omitted.
This. I joined a moderately successful startup (good acquisition where founders made > $1 m) and the rewards were not worth the risks as an early employee. Also, the RSUs are low risk, high rewards at the "usual suspects". Unless you love working on a small team with more autonomy, but without comfortable resources and losing sleep over whether your company will be there next week, I just don't see the attraction of…
Just be warned, a startup often has the promise of more autonomy, but there are plenty of startups run by ego-centric micromanaging wanna-be engineers. Be careful equating, 'being able to talk to the CEO' as autonomy, you may find yourself having to explain your decisions/code to people who's engineering skills are 'being able to convince a VC to give them money'. You'll also probably not tackle 'large problems' but…
> but there are plenty of startups run by ego-centric micromanaging wanna-be engineers.
This times 1000. Too many stories to tell, especially in SV.
Re: Ask HN: Pros and cons of working at a startup in 2018?
#227Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm a startup founder and will happily say that if you are an engineer, in Silicon Valley, in 2018, and you are maximizing for income, then you should not work at an early-stage startup. I did some hand-wavy math, here: https://medium.com/@kwindla/what-kind-of-silicon-valley-comp... Dan Luu did some, too, here: https://danluu.com/startup-tradeoffs/
I’m sorry but I don’t buy it. Startups employees are squeezed out by vc dilution and lack of big exits. Those $1m total equity cash out from startups I fear are fairly rare. Whereas working for faang type companies, a l5 is more or less guaranteed to make $300k a year. $500-750k is doable without being a “brand name”. Timing and luck, but the spread is much smaller. Startup founders have made a devils deal with vcs t…
It looks like you both agree, they said you should not work at an early stage startup.
Re: Ask HN: Pros and cons of working at a startup in 2018?
#228I echo the comp aspect. I pretty much had a best case non-unicorn startup exit; wonderful benefits pre-acquisition, actual unlimited PTO, and normal ~40hr/workweek, acquired almost immediately after receiving my shares, golden handcuffs after. My total comp was more or less equivalent to my peers doing the big 4 grind over the same time period. They had zero risk and I had to win the start up lotto. But if I had to d…
I think a huge part of whether it is more fun or not is about where you are in life. Startup life was great for me when I was young and single, and enjoyed the startup lifestyle of excitement and risk. Now that I am older and have a wife and kid, I really like the stability, predictability, and salary of a job with a bigger company.
Absolutely. Also, startups are intense, which goes both ways.
Intense can be great if you're looking for that, and the startup is doing well.
Intense can be terrible if the startup isn't doing well and/or the atmosphere has gone acrid. It is now intensely bad.
It's like a polite disagreement with a casual acquaintance versus bitter fight with a close friend.
When startups derail, they really do go far off the rails.
Re: Ask HN: Pros and cons of working at a startup in 2018?
#229I work at a startup (Reforge) and I own a startup (Casting Call Club).
I turned down a Google offer to do these startups.
Here's why:
1. I have full control over building things from start to finish without politics.
2. I work remotely, setting my own hours. All of us have been doing what we do for 10+ years. We care little about the hours put in and care a lot about the impact made. I can do this from SF (used to live), or Boston (where I live now), or Bulgaria (to visit family).
3. I learn so much about the whole picture, rather than a niche.
I love Google (and my previous employer Eventbrite), and might return to them one day. For now, startups match me.
Re: Ask HN: Pros and cons of working at a startup in 2018?
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
Take that view with a huge grain of salt. Nobody is denying that someone, somewhere is making $400k as a software engineer, but we are talking outlier employees at outlier companies. You’re not getting this as a medium level rank and file engineer, or at a non-FAANG company. This whole “software engineers make $400k” trope seems to have taken on a life of its own. Every time salary comes up here, these guys come out…
FAANG + Microsoft + Uber + Airbnb hire thousands and thousands of engineers in the Valley and Seattle every year. 400K is L5-L6 salary (senior engineer, first level manager). There are a TON of engineers making that money. They are not really outliers, and FAANGMUA is also not really outlier considering Google itself has 80K employees and Amazon and MSFT have over 200K employees.
I think you guys are agreeing with each other, right? L5-L6 isn't "average", is it? Most FAANGMUA employees are not managers/senior engineers.